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. 
























1 















































BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE MODERN MEANING OF CHURCH 
MEMBERSHIP 

THE DEEPER MEANING OF 
STEWARDSHIP 




CHRIST AND 
THE PROBLEMS 
OF YOUTH 


BY 

JOHN M. VERSTEEG 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 

c°- mv 


N\ 






The Library 

of Congress 

wao —nmn m . 

WASHINGTON 



. 4 * 


Copyright, 1924, by 

JOHN M. VERSTEEG 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 





Printed in the United States of America 


FEB 23'24 

©C1A777247 






TO MY MOTHER 


“If the grave’s gates could be undone, 
She would not know her little son, 

I am so grown. If we should meet 
She would pass by me in the street. 
Unless my soul’s face let her see 
My sense of what she did for me.” 1 


‘Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Collected Poems, "C. L. M,” John Masefield. 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

Foreword. 9 

I. Christ and Youth. 13 

I. “We Test Our Lives by Thine”_ 13 

II. “Strong Son of God, Immortal 

Love”. 18 

III. “Christ’s Life Our Code”. 25 

IV. “It May be He Shall Take My 

Hand”. 28 

V. “O, May the Least Omission Pain”. 32 

VI. “Not for Ease, or Worldly Pleasure” 38 

n. Christ and Our Decisions. 45 

I. “His Lofty Precepts to Translate”. 45 

EE. “His Cross Our Creed”. 52 

HI. Christ and the Body. 59 

I. “One .Who Was Known in Storms 

to Sail”. 59 

H. “Till All This Earthly Part of Me 

Glows With Thy Fire Divine”. . 64 

III. “Thine is the Quickening Power 

That Gives Increase”. 68 

IV. “And Calming Passion’s Fierce and 

Stormy Gales”. 74 

IV. Christ and Truth . 81 

I. “Bless Thou the Truth, Dear Lord, 

To Me, To Me”. 81 

H. “He’s True to God Who’s True to 

Man”. 85 
















CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

V. Christ and Progress . 93 

I. “Each Sees One Color of Thy Rain¬ 
bow Light”. 93 

II. “Reclothe Us in Our Rightful 

Mind”. 100 

III. “Were Still in Heart and Con¬ 

science Free”. 106 

IV. “Peculiar Honors to Our King”... 112 

VI. Christ and Our Task . 117 

I. “Give Our Hearts to Thy Obedi¬ 
ence”. 117 

II. “And We Have Come Into Our 

Heritage”. 121 

III. “So Purer Light Shall Mark the 

Road”. 127 


8 










FOREWORD 

The size of this book makes it evident 
that this is an essay on the problems of 
youth rather than a catalogue of them. 
Yet the word “essay” will scarcely fit this 
discussion. In the pulpit, at young peo¬ 
ple’s gatherings, and especially during the 
delightful “morning watch” of several 
Epworth League Institutes, the thoughts 
herein contained were given voice. They 
were intended for young people as well 
as about them. The devotional note 
struck there has been retained here. The 
light of the social sciences and of psy¬ 
chology must be shed on the problems of 
youth. But “the life that was the light 
for men” is needed most of all. The au¬ 
thor is dedicated to the proposition that 
Christ is the hope of the world and so 
is the hope of youth. There has been no 
attempt at novelty. The effort has been 
simply to restate ancient questions and 
arguments in terms of modern life. These 
discussions have helped some. They are 
9 


FOREWORD 

given to print in the hope that they may 
help others. 

The first four chapters concern them¬ 
selves with “the mind-body problem”; the 
last two deal with the questions of progress 
and brotherhood. Although the latter 
differ from the former both in form and 
approach, the writer feels that his dis¬ 
cussion would be inadequate without this 
simple emphasis on service and growth. 

J. M. V. 


10 



Look, what heights? 

What deeps, break on your eyes; what heavens, 
what hells 

In the small orbit of the heart of youth? 1 

—Herman Hagedorn. 

It was better, youth 
Should strive, thro’ acts uncouth, 

Toward making, than repose on aught found made. 

—Robert Browning. 

They will touch the hearts of the living with a 
flame that sanctifies, 

A flame that they took with strong young hands 
from the altar-fires of God . 2 —Joyce Kilmer. 

Oh, you blind leaders who seek to convert the 
world by labored disputations!... Give us the 
Young. Give us the Young and we will create 
a new mind and a new earth in a single generation.* 

—Benjamin Kidd. 

The Word was made flesh. — John. 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Hagedorn: from The Great Maze and the Heart of Youth. 

2 From the poem, “The New School,” from Main Street and 
Other Poems. Reprinted by permission of George H. Doran 
Company, publishers, copyright, 1917. 

8 From The Science of Power. Courtesy of G. P. Putnam’s 
Sons, publishers, New York and London. 


12 



CHAPTER I 
CHRIST AND YOUTH 
I. “We Test Our Lives by Thine!” 

The man who wrote the Second Epistle 
to Timothy was in prison for preaching 
the gospel. With chained wrists he pain¬ 
fully indites his letter to inform his friend 
that for the sake of his gospel (note this 
personal pronoun; the gospel has so be¬ 
come part of him that he cannot think 
of it otherwise; for the sake of his gospel) 
he is treated as a criminal. Of a sudden 
it dawns on him that they may shut up 
his word, but they can never hope to 
shut up the word of God. His soul gets 
ablaze at this contemplation. He jots 
down his triumphant thought in a mood 
of exultation. They may jail me, he 
writes, but they cannot jail the word 
of God. They have put me in prison, 
but the voice of God will burst all prison 
bars and scale all prison walls. Just once 
more, likely, my feet will march, from 
13 


CHRIST AND 


jail to the place of my death; but his 
truth goes marching on. Remember this, 
my friend, if you should never hear from 
me again: There is no prison for the word 
of God, and it knows no death! You 
have something less and else than the 
faith of this man if you fancy that the 
word of God is limited to the printed 
page; that only chemically treated cel¬ 
lulose covered over with hieroglyphics is 
a fit vehicle for his ceaseless thought. 
The word of God is not bound. 

“Beyond the sacred page 
I seek thee. Lord; 

My spirit pants for thee, 

The living word.” 

The Bible speaks of itself with exquisite 
modesty. It never boasts of itself. It 
makes its boast in the Lord. It does not 
apply to itself the term “the word of 
God.” It bestows that otherwhere. The 
New Testament speaks of Jesus as the 
word of God. We have taken this laurel 
phrase from the brow of Jesus and given 
it to a book. It is time we put it back 
where it belongs, despite the high esteem 
14 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

in which we hold the Book. Of it, as of 
no other writing in all literature, we have 
the right to say that the word of God 
was made book. There is none like it. 
But great as it is, it is not great enough 
for this exclusive title. Only Jesus de¬ 
serves this. For the unbounded word of 
God in Jesus became boundless. There 
have been good men, great men, men of 
piety and learning, of courage and con¬ 
viction, of wisdom and of wit; there have 
been men whose souls outran by centuries 
the day in which they lived; but not one 
of them has made the impression Jesus 
has made and makes. Not only does he 
create an impression for God, but he 
forever makes an impression of God. 
There is a tradition that as the mother 
of Paganini was dying he held his violin 
to her lips to receive her last breath, and 
that thereafter always in the tones of 
that instrument he heard the voice of his 
mother. Somehow when Jesus breathes 
upon a life, forever after the voice of 
God is audible therein. This is a strange 
matter. Men have been hard put to ac¬ 
count for it. They can only account for it 
15 


CHRIST AND 


as they account for him. One likes to re¬ 
think how the disciples struggled to explain 
their Lord. One fancies Peter pondering 
which word to use about Christ. There 
comes to his mind the word “rabbi,” 
a name revered among Jews. And, surely, 
Jesus was this. He had proved his right 
to be called teacher. But as Peter 
thought about it, he saw that would 
not do. It did not explain all the facts. 
It was inadequate. Next he considered 
“prophet,” and what a word this is! 
How fitting for one whose lips spoke such 
eternal truths! Here was a strong temp¬ 
tation, but Peter rejected it, for it could 
not begin to describe the meaning Jesus 
had. And now he lights on a word that 
is full of reverence. Why not call him 
“priest”? Was there ever one who more 
truly graced this word? Yet Peter is 
obliged to forego it; it did not go far 
enough. He ransacks his vocabulary for 
the one word that will do. Like a flash 
of inspiration it came to him. Half awed 
to use so great a word he used the big 
word “God”! And all who have come 
to know Christ and the power of his end- 
16 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


less life have had to hunt for the word 
that would be big enough. The word 
upon which they hit was the biggest word 
we know. For he answers the need of 
the heart. 

The church has made it a requirement 
that men see God in Christ. The New 
Testament makes it an acquirement. This 
is why the assertion is made that no one 
can call Jesus Lord except in the Holy 
Spirit. One’s estimate of Jesus reveals 
one’s character. Have you heard of 
that rich man, deeply ignorant, who 
while doing Europe went to view the 
famous pictures? One day he went with¬ 
out a guide to one of the galleries. He 
chased from pillar to post, was through 
in twenty minutes; and then the ex-black¬ 
smith walked up to a white-haired verger 
and said: “I’ve been hearing all my 
life about these famous masterpieces. 
Masterpieces? Bah! Daubs, I call them! 
Very inferior! I want you to know that 
I am greatly disappointed! I feel that I 
have been wasting my time.” The old 
verger put down his book, polished his 
glasses reflectively, carefully scrutinized 
17 


CHRIST AND 


the man’s face and said quietly: “Sir, 
these pictures are not on trial. The 
spectators are!” Jesus, the word of God, 
is not on trial now, but we spectators 
are. The opinion we hold of him shows 
the soul that is in us, lays bare the spirit 
we have. When the author of the Gospel 
of John took the greatest word of his 
day—the Greek word Logos —and so re¬ 
ferred to Jesus as God’s Ultimate Utter¬ 
ance, he unconsciously revealed what 
manner of man he was. The person of 
Christian tastes regards no word too 
high for that Master in whom was God. 


II. “Strong Son of God, Immortal 
Love” 

Starting then with our highest word, 
let us note that in him God was youth. 
The fact of his infancy has caught 
our imagination. Christmas— Christ- mas, 
what does it mean, except that he, like 
all of us, was once a helpless babe? 

“Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. 

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. 

18 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


The stars in the bright sky looked down where he 
lay: 

The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay. 

“The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes; 

The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. 

I love thee. Lord Jesus, look down from the sky, 

And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.” 

That he began his life as a youth is patent 
to us all. But that he continued and 
ended his life as a youth—had we thought 
of that? 

We have but meager accounts of his 
early years. “Lives” of Christ disappoint 
us, not because of poor writing, but for 
want of facts. Yet the little we know 
gives a deal of light. We know that he 
had a good home. The character of his 
mother we need not delay upon. The 
ages have rendered her homage. “An 
incidental greatness charactered her un¬ 
considered ways.” Consider his use of 
“father.” He spoke it reverently. He 
never thought of his father but that he 
thought of God! Jesus could think of 
no higher compliment to pay the Al¬ 
mighty than to call him Father. What 
a commentary on the life of this man! 

19 


CHRIST AND 


How often does the thought of one’s 
father put one in mind of God? In A 
Man From Maine 1 Edward Bok says: 
“Our sons and daughters are already 
beginning to see and discuss the view 
that there is something more to life than 
the mere making of money: that man 
cannot live by bread alone. These suc¬ 
cessors of ours are going to look back to 
our records and ask, as did one son re¬ 
cently: ‘Yes, I know that father made 
a lot of money and built up a big business. 
But what else did he do?’ That will be 
the acid test: ‘What else did he do?’ 
That is the yardstick by which hundreds 
of present-day fathers will be measured, 
and our name and our works will mean 
to our children exactly what we make 
that name stand for and the works that 
we fashion with our hands. And as 
things are, it will be a merciless reckon¬ 
ing for some of us.” Well, here was one 
son whose judgment on his father was 
that God must resemble him. If there 
was anything amiss in his family life, the 
fault lay with his brothers. Papini’s 


1 Charles Scribner’s Sons, publishers. Used by permission. 

20 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


pretty fancy that Christ had no such 
kin flies in the face of facts. They could 
not understand him and declared him 
fool. 

Joses, the brother of Jesus, plodded from day to day, 
With never a vision within him to glorify his clay; 
Joses the brother of Jesus was one with the heavy 
clod; 

But Jesus was the soul of rapture, and soared, like 
a lark, with God. 

Joses the brother of Jesus was only a worker in wood, 
And he never could see the glory that Jesus his 
brother could. 

“Why stays he not in the workshop?” he often 
used to complain, 

“Sawing the Lebanon cedar, imparting to woods 
their stain? 

Why must he thus go roaming, forsaking my fa¬ 
ther’s trade, 

While hammers are busily sounding and there is a 
gain to be made?” 

Thus ran the mind of Joses, apt with plummet and 
rule. 

And deeming whoever surpassed him either a knave 
or a fool; 

For he never walked with the prophets in God’s 
great garden of bliss, 

And of all the mistakes of the ages the saddest, 
methinks, is this: 


21 


CHRIST AND 

To have such a brother as Jesus, to speak with day 
by day, 

But never to catch the vision which glorified his 
clay . 2 

It was an artisan’s family. It was not 
so poor that it had to forego necessities, 
nor so rich as to be given over to luxuries. 
It is from homes such as these that the 
best character comes. Suppose, as has 
been suggested, that Jesus had been born 
in a different home. Suppose his father 
had been rich and that he had early 
acquired unwholesome habits and lost 
touch with common folk. Or suppose he 
had been the son of a shiftless derelict, 
that he had known abject poverty. Would 
the mind that was in him have developed 
then? At all events, it is in homes that 
know neither wealth nor want that the 
soul has its best chance. Christ’s para¬ 
bles reflect the homelike life of his child¬ 
hood. He taught truth by truths his 
home had taught. 

We know very little about his educa¬ 
tion. But such education as he received 


2 From The Cry of Youth , by Harry Kemp. Mitchell Kennerley, 
publisher. 

22 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

was religious education. “The little Lord 
Jesus” probably sat with his fellows in 
a circle around the Hazzan, the syna¬ 
gogue teacher, and there learned his letters 
and chanted the classical passages culled 
from the holy books. In that day the 
place of learning was the place of prayer, 
and so, as “knowledge grew from more 
to more,” “more of reverence” in him 
dwelt. This sort of education stood him 
in good stead in times of decision and 
temptation and in his work of teaching. 
He freely and frequently quoted the 
words which he had learned as a child. 
“Religious education” is a familiar phrase 
to-day. The phrase is much in evidence 
because the need is becoming evident. Yet 
in the very use of this phrase danger lurks. 
We are likely to regard religious education 
apart from education as such; unless reli¬ 
gious education makes education religious it 
fails. Jesus was forever spiritualizing the 
commonplaces of life. In a day when these 
are so constantly commercialized and so 
often rationalized we dare not forget how 
Jesus interpreted them. Seen with the eyes 
of Jesus the ordinary is of consequence. 

23 


CHRIST AND 


And from his youth his had been a 
religious experience. This too is normal 
for youth. Time was when people thought 
religion something adult throughout. It 
was a significant day in religious history 
when investigators found that the period 
of “conversion” is between thirteen and 
fifteen. But recent investigations set the 
time earlier. We know how deeply reli¬ 
gious Jesus was at twelve. “Why did 
you look for me? Did you not know I 
had to be at my Father’s house?” Many 
of us early treasured the stately phrase: 
“And Jesus increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favor with God and man.” 
He had a spiritual pilgrimage; he increased 
in favor with God! Jesus found in God 
his boundless source of strength. 

From this intimacy with God his life- 
investment resulted. Much in his environ¬ 
ment served to stir his heart. The nation 
he called his own was under the Roman 
heel. Indignation at injustice was easily 
imbibed. Many a youth had felt the 
spirit of patriotism upon him “to pro¬ 
claim release for captives and ... to set 
free the oppressed.” But Christ traced 
24 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


his mission to a source deeper than 
patriotism. He made this scripture his 
own: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: 
he has sent me to proclaim release for 
captives and ... to set free the op¬ 
pressed.” “Patriotism is not enough,” 
Edith Cavell told the world. Jesus knew 
what it lacked. It lacked the very thing 
for which the church exists. But in his 
time even the church had fallen on evil 
days. It exalted mental agility and 
neglected moral insight. It disputed pica¬ 
yune laws and for a pretense made long 
prayers. Christ recognized their bicker¬ 
ing for the shallow thing it was. As he 
communed with his Father he became 
sure that he had been born in order to 
witness truth. 

III. “Christ’s Life Our Code” 

As we count age to-day Jesus remained 
a youth. “Jesus himself, when he began 
to teach, was about thirty years of age.” 
The New Testament does not introduce 
you to one who has had his fill of years. 
Men talk of his perfect humanity and 
then proceed to think of it in terms of 
25 


CHRIST AND 


advanced years. But Christ’s humanity 
was the humanity of youth. In the Gos¬ 
pels you do not hear a voice that has 
lost resilience and power because of de¬ 
clining days. Nor do you see an anaemic, 
sad-eyed ascetic, who shuts himself off 
from men to be holy unto the Lord. You 
find a rugged, virile, gentle figure, who 
moves about like a perpetual benediction, 
whom children love and mothers revere, 
to whom strong men are irresistibly 
drawn and from whom emanates every 
virtue with which life may hope to be 
adorned. Down the ages one hears the 
echo of the crowds hurrying along the 
lanes and highways of Palestine in response 
to the announcement, “Jesus of Nazareth 
passeth by!” How the thrill of it set 
vibrant hope in hearts disconsolate! Here 
was a man , a young man: 

“Who that one moment hath the least described him, 
Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar, 

Doth not despise all excellence beside him, 

Pleasures and powers that are not and that are?” 

The artists have not only painted Jesus 
as too weak a man; they have painted 
26 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


him as too old a man. He was no aged 
youth; he had not matured prematurely. 
It could not be said of him that “his 
eyes were set by reason of his age.” His 
was not the wisdom of age, but the wisdom 
of ages. Yet the narratives usher us into 
the presence of a youth who did not live 
to be thirty-five. 

This youth had to live all of his life in his 
youth. He began to teach at thirty and 
died at thirty-three. Yet he did not permit 
his youth to interfere with his life. He con¬ 
tributed to humanity the most valuable life 
it knows. It is significant that a youth’s 
life was the greatest life that was ever lived. 
He had not long to live, but he made the 
most of it. Great life has satisfactions 
long life may never know. Jesus out- 
lived Methuselah. If we can forget for 
the moment the slang connotation of the 
phrase, Christ came to pass life up. Life 
first, life full, life best: this is the good 
news of Jesus. True, not even now is 
this commonly understood. We have 
been taught men’s thoughts about Christ 
rather than Christ’s thought about man. 
But some day it will be clear that Chris- 
27 


CHRIST AND 


tianity is the plus-sign of life. It adds! 
It adds to faith ardor, to ardor intelli¬ 
gence, to intelligence composure, to com¬ 
posure purposefulness, to purposefulness 
spirituality, to spirituality solidarity, and 
to solidarity love. Extend this catalogue 
as you will, and still you do not exhaust 
the implications of his life. “All these 
things the Spirit writes on truly awakened 
hearts.” The prelude of conclusions in 
the Gospel according to John has no 
words truer than these: “In him life lay, 
and this life was the light for men.” The 
language at our command reveals the 
measure of our mind. If Christ is the 
word of God, then is God poet indeed! 
The lyric of Christ’s life is the epic of 
God’s love. 

IV. “It May Be He Shall Take 
My Hand” 

This youth , for the most part, dealt 
with youth. His forerunner, John the 
Baptist, is reputed to have begun his 
ministry at about the age Christ started 
his. John surrendered his life in a tre¬ 
mendous protest against iniquity in high 
28 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


places not more than three years after he 
began to announce that the reign of God 
was at hand. Jesus heard the call of the 
Spirit by way of this youth. Peter is 
young in the Gospels, old in the Epistles; 
it is with Peter the youth that Jesus had 
to do. This is even more true of John, 
and concerning all the disciples tradition 
reports youth. Here, then, was a band 
of youths led by a youth. It is not with¬ 
out cause that the prayer sometimes 
arises: 

“Youth, youth! Ah, God ! 3 

Be merciful to the wild heart of youth,” 

but so far as we know Jesus never prayed 
like this. Youth suited the purposes of 
Jesus. Himself a youth, surrounded by 
youth, he eagerly ministered to youth. 
Not that he neglected the aged. He was 
too wise for that. He had time for such 
as Nicodemus. He did not deem it folly 
to trade thought with men of years. Yet 
in both word and deed he busied himself 
with youth. He approved the childlike 
and condemned the childish (in grown-up 

8 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
The Great Maze and the Heart of Youth, Hagedorn. 

29 



CHRIST AND 


folks; especially those who have put away 
childish things and put foolish things in 
their stead). He healed an officer’s boy; 
he raised from the dead a widow’s son; 
the little daughter of the president of 
the synagogue was by him restored to 
health. His parables often dealt with 
growth, the phenomenon of youth. He 
gave fresh terms to old truths and wrought 
new meanings into words that had long 
been vehicles for thought. He talked of 
a prodigal son who “squandered his means 
in loose living,” and a more prodigal 
brother who squandered his soul in mean 
living. He enforced his teachings by 
telling of bridesmaids and by setting the 
child in the midst of men’s minds. With 
a young ruler he held a conference about 
the life of lasting worth. At length this 
young teacher was betrayed by a young 
traitor and sent to an early grave. If, 
now, you read the New Testament still 
further, you come upon a fiery young 
fanatic, early risen to prominence, whose 
cramped career is arrested by the unseen 
vision, and who pens some mighty epistles 
to young servants of Christ. Is it any 
30 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


wonder that those who read the New 
Testament have their youth renewed? 
Jesus is master of youth. 

The word was made youth. There are 
youths whose only claim to youth is the 
fewness of their years. They seem to 
have reached their second childhood be¬ 
fore they fairly outgrow their first. Their 
modern bodies move to the measure of 
antiquated minds. They are belated in 
the sense that they never “send their 
minds on ahead/’ They have “spilt 
their wine of youth.” “There is no tre¬ 
mendousness in them.” They bestir them¬ 
selves no further than circumstance pre¬ 
scribes. The only train of thought they 
take is that which runs on the line of 
least resistance. Like that wealthy woman 
whose wont it was to close her eyes while 
passing through those sections of the city 
where poverty prevails, they covet com¬ 
fort above all. They are devotees of the 
“soft” life. They get out of life all that 
comes their way, but to go out of their 
way for the sake of life is far from them. 
They neither deny nor defy problems. 
They acquiesce in as many of them as 
31 


CHRIST AND 


they cannot evade. They cry, “Peace, 
Peace,” when there is no peace. Never 
theirs the craving: 

“I seek the wonder at the heart of man, 

I would go up to the far-seeing places, 

While youth is ours, turn toward me for a space 
The marvel of your rapture-lighted face .” 4 

V. “O, May tiie Least Omission Pain” 

It is easy for youth to fritter life away. 
“There arose a great tempest, . . . but he 
was asleep,” the New Testament tells 
about Christ. This may be interpreted as 
a compliment to his composure. But 
apply it to other people and at once you 
perceive it shorn of all compliment. The 
bishop who remarked that “texts are not 
good if detached” had not thought to 
try out this text. See what an accurate 
statement this is to make about many 
folks. One would have to search far and 
long for a more intimate and accurate 
description: “There arose a great tempest, 
but he was asleep.” It arose a few years 
ago. The world was swept with the 


4 From Sonnets of a Portrait Painter, by Arthur Davison Fiske. 
Mitchell Kennerley, publisher. 

32 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


storms of hate. What wreckage of life 
and institutions! This wanton expendi¬ 
ture of men and means, this mortgaging 
of civilization, was justified only if cer¬ 
tain ideas of life were totally wrecked in 
the storm. Yet there are those who, if 
they were not asleep in the tempest, are 
asleep to it now. For the tempest is with 
us still. Youth will have to brave it! In 
that most delightful of histories, The 
Story of Mankind , Hendrik Van Loon 
speaks this fitting word: “The original 
mistake, which was responsible for all 
this misery, was committed when our 
scientists began to create a new world 
of steel and iron and chemistry and 
electricity and forgot that the human 
mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, 
is lazier than the well-known sloth, and 
marches from one hundred to three hun¬ 
dred years behind the small group of 
courageous leaders. ... A human being 
with the mind of a sixteenth century 
tradesman driving a Rolls-Royce is still 
a human being with the mind of a six¬ 
teenth-century tradesman .” 5 Consider 

5 Boni & Liveright, publishers. Used by permission. 

33 



CHRIST AND 


how many sleep on, content to worship 
the God of things as they were. They 
betoken the depth of their slumber by 
enunciating falsettos of threadbare the¬ 
ories. They are blind to the meaning 
of the tempest through which the world 
has come and to the subtler tempest 
which threatens it to-day. There arose 
a great tempest, but they aren’t per¬ 
mitting it to keep them awake. Then 
there are those hapless creatures in whom 
the sorrow of the world worked the atrophy 
of the soul. Prior to the war, they had 
faith in the pace of the race; they were 
partners in the projects of the Prince 
of Peace. But since it, they have said 
within themselves: “Soul, succumb to 
sadness; hope is a snare, life is a de¬ 
lusion, progress is a joke; ‘the play is 
the tragedy, Man, and the hero, the 
Conqueror, Worm.’ ” There arose a great 
tempest and it put them to sleep. Their 
devotion succumbed to drowsiness. They 
relaxed their vigil for the day of Jesus 
Christ. 

Moreover, there arose a great tempest 
in the industrial world. Much the same 
34 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

causes of world war underlie class war. 
Greed, provincialism, and passion are 
bound to be operative in both. The indus¬ 
trial tempest has been long rising. It 
was no mere tempest in a teapot when 
Moses conducted the walkout among the 
brickkilns of Egypt. There have been 
lulls in the storm, to be sure; but it has 
gathered momentum and cannot be stayed 
until “justice rolls down like a mighty 
stream.” Of how many a person must 
it here be said, “There arose a great 
tempest, . . . but he was asleep”! You can 
hear such men snore as they speak; you 
can discern from their deeds that their 
eyes are deeply closed to the issues that 
stir men’s souls. The alarm clock of dis¬ 
content goes off, but they slumber through 
it all. The sound of their sleep is abroad 
in the land. Employers assert, “Compe¬ 
tition is the life of trade,” “Business is 
business,” or mutter incoherent gutturals 
concerning “property rights.” With sim¬ 
ilarly familiar phrases, the workers an¬ 
nounce to all and sundry how deeply 
they sleep their sleep. Meanwhile, the 
demand that industry shall become, as the 
35 


CHRIST AND 


Social Creed of the Churches puts it, “a 
religious experience, developing mutual 
service and sacrifice, the interpretation in 
economic terms of the brotherhood of 
man and the Fatherhood of God,” is 
being wafted to us by the very winds of 
heaven: 

“Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them 
Nor thrust the dawn back for one hour. 

Truth, love, justice, though you slay them 
Return with more than earthly power. 

Strive, if you will, to stem the fountain 

That sends the spring through leaf and spray; 

Drive back the sun from the Eastern mountain. 
Then bid this mightier movement stay .” 6 

Or permit these words to apply to 
another matter. There arose a great 
tempest in the Christian Church. The 
eruption of Mr. Bryan concerning Dar¬ 
winism is but one manifestation of an 
issue greater far. The revolt against ex¬ 
ternal authority, which began with Martin 
Luther, or, at least, was projected by 
him, is coming into its own. Men tolerate 


• From Collected Poems , Vol. II, by Alfred Noyes. Reprinted 
by permission of the publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company. 

36 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


tradition until it becomes tyranny. The 
demand is for democracy in doctrine. 
We need the untrammeled pursuit of 
truth. People fear a spiritual spy system 
in the form of creeds. They are eager, 
with Walter Rauschenbusch, to carry 
their policemen inside of them. They 
do not wish the inner light dulled by outer 
candles. And so the battle is pitched 
between those who deem certain theories 
essential to Christian faith and those 
who hold the faith essential to any theory. 
There are just now a lot of candidates 
for the neutral zone. They are running 
to cover from the battle. There are others 
who think this matter not sufficiently 
weighty to elicit their interest. One 
fancies the Master marveling at them. 
“You are very good at reading the signs 
of the skies; how comes it that you cannot 
read the signs of the times?” There arose 
a great tempest—great in the challenge it 
holds for the world—but they are pious 
Rip Van Winkles. God forbid that of 
any young person the record should have 
to be: “There arose a great tempest— 
but he was asleep.” 


37 


CHRIST AND 


VI. “Not for Ease, or Worldly 
Pleasure” 

This can never be the record of Chris¬ 
tian youth. For normal youths thrill to 
life. They always talk in terms of it. 
Disraeli once said that “almost every¬ 
thing . . . great has been done by youth.” 
“There’s a touch of to-morrow in all Cole 
does to-day,” the automobile advertise¬ 
ment declares. Youth subscribes to a 
similar creed. It has face fronted to the 
future and believes that the best in the 
past shall find fruition there. It holds 
that the lesson of history is that man’s 
chance lies in change. To be young may 
be “very heaven,” but it must be very 
life. If God made life a matter of pop¬ 
ular franchise, the normal youths among 
us would vote “Yes”! full-throated and 
with both hands up. They need no poet 
to convince them: 

“How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit 
to employ 

All the heart and the soul and the senses forever 
in joy.” 

They know! They know, in spite of the 
38 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


fact that much about life is not clear. 
Life is no open book before them. There 
are many, many pages to decipher and 
others that seem illegible or lost. No 
celestial secret service provides them ad¬ 
vance information concerning uncharted 
realms. They too have to take upon 
their lips the confession of Paul and like 
seers who, whenever they tried to survey 
life, saw but a puzzle in a mirror. And 
yet they love life; yet they sing with joy, 
“To be living is sublime”; yet theirs, 
with Rupert Brooke, the devout thanks¬ 
giving: 

“Now God be thanked 
Who hath matched us with his hour .” 7 

Such youths, though be set by problems 
are not upset by them. When they 
match minds with mysteries their souls 
profit most. They have the delectable 
consciousness that “their strength is made 
perfect in weakness.” They are heirs of 
lasting life. They thank God and take 
courage that in Jesus the word was made 
youth. 

7 From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, copyrighted, by 
Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. Used by permission. 

39 



CHRIST AND 


They are aware that this is a difficult 
day to be young. Perhaps this has always 
been so. But it is so to-day. We live 
in a*n era of speed. We move with rapid¬ 
ity and expect things to come on the 
rush. Yet some things cannot be rushed. 
Growth is a slow process. Knowledge 
does not come overnight. Character takes 
time. The chief danger of speed is not 
in motion but in emotion. We do not 
tarry till we get the power of an expe¬ 
rience. We but touch it and hasten on. 
With speed, our interest in things is 
easily exhausted and seldom exhaustive. 
We must ever on to new sensations and 
lose no time about it! Thus we become 
seekers for thrills rather than seekers for 
truth. What will we not do for a thrill? 
A speaker at a recent church congress 
told of a young lady who went to the 
chaperone of the party and inquired 
hopingly: “I suppose we shock you 

terribly ?” 

“Not at all!” came the wise reply; 
“not at all; but I think your technique 
very bad!” 

Youth to-day has an undue appetite 
40 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

for thrills and is most childishly gullible 
about them! A speedy age is a super¬ 
ficial one. We see much but understand 
little. We accept appearance for reality: 
a college degree for intelligence. We 
care more for the impression we make 
on others than for the expression we are 
of God. We prefer to stand in with 
others rather than to stand up for truth. 
To speak right out seems braver than to 
speak out right. Thus rankness passes for 
frankness! We are frightened into doing 
wrong by the slur that “It is lonely to 
be good,” and forget how very often it 
is only good to be lonely. The super¬ 
ficial easily becomes the cynical. The 
cynical person just drifts. Is impulse 
tumultuous? Then he is swept along. 
Which novelist talks loudest? In the 
tortuous stream of his scanty thought 
you will see the cynic drift. He is, as 
Jesus saw, “as sheep having no shep¬ 
herd.” He follows no leader; but every 
“wind of doctrine” and every “doctrine 
of wind” moves him at will. Such are 
some of the difficulties troubling us to-day 
—a hunger for thrills, a passion for pop- 
41 


CHRIST AND 

ularity, inability to find and follow good 
leadership. 

Jesus, the most successful youth history 
records, had to face just these. Thrills! 
This was the temptation that faced him 
at the beginning, and it often recurred. 
Men implored him to do spectacular and 
thrilling things, but he refused. He was 
not looking for thrills, and it was not 
in his mind to provide others with them. 
He was frank, but first of all he was 
reverent. Popular! He “followed hungry 
and athirst the lonely exaltation of his 
mind .” 8 He knew how and when to be 
lonely. For then, as always, God peopled 
his solitudes; “He setteth the solitary in 
families.” Leadership! He found it in 
God, who was to him a very present help 
in trouble and out. Nor did he simply 
find leadership. He brought it. Mil¬ 
lions look to him to-day and say, “Thou 
art the guide of my youth.” These come 
to have his mind. These learn to live to 
enrich life with goodness, beauty, truth. 
These do not merely pursue truth; they 

8 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Collected Plays —"Good Friday,” Masefield. 

42 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


personify it. These do not live in a com¬ 
munity to live on it. They live on a 
community to live for it. They get a 
living but they give a life. They conse¬ 
crate themselves for others. In them 
the word is made youth. 


43 


Once to every man and nation comes the moment 
to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good 
or evil side; 

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering 
each the bloom or blight, 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 
upon the right. 

And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that dark¬ 
ness and that light .—James Russell Lowell. 

It is not so much where you live. 

As whether while you live you live 
And to the world your highest give. 

And so make answer positive 

That you are truly fit to live .—John Oxenham . 1 

One thing is yours you may not spend: 

Your very inmost self of all 

You may not bind it, may not bend, 

Nor stem the river of your call. 

To make for ocean is its end .—Henry Ibsen. 

My food is to do the will 
Of him who sent me. 

And to accomplish 
His work. . . . 

Any one 

Who chooses to do 
His will, 

Shall understand.— Jesus. 

1 From Hearts Courageous, The Abingdon Press. 


44 



CHAPTER II 


CHRIST AND OUR DECISIONS 

I. “His Lofty Precepts to Translate” 

Jesus had to make his choices in his 
youth. How long he had faced the ques¬ 
tions that attacked him in the tempta¬ 
tions the Gospels tell us of, no one is able 
to tell. They surely came to his mind 
as early as they came to ours. Had the 
satanic suggestion, “Cast thyself down,” 
failed to come to him during his formative 
years, he would not have been truly hu¬ 
man. It is a staggering thought what 
chances God takes on youth. Youth is 
God’s best bet. It is also his last. He 
has no other. Upon the choices we make 
he stakes the success of his cause. There 
is no escaping. We answer with our 
lives. This Jesus did. When sin prom¬ 
ised, “I will give,” Christ answered, “I 
will serve.” And what he said to tempta¬ 
tion he stood by the rest of his life. He 
had thought up to ultimate values, and 
45 


CHRIST AND 


to these he gave his life. There were two 
dominant choices he made. He made up 
his mind to bring men abundant life. 
And he made up his life to witness truth. 

Compare the first of these choices with 
those others have made and make. Many 
resolve to enjoy themselves. That is 
their main object in life. There have 
always been Epicureans: those who hold 
that pleasure is paramount. How some 
folks can enjoy themselves passes compre¬ 
hension; one would think, considering the 
facts, that themselves would make them¬ 
selves sick; one thinks of Masefield’s sane 
advice: they must get “out of the noisy 
sickroom of themselves .” 1 Some people 
who enjoy themselves enjoy a questionable 
matter; they are easily amused. Joys 
may be parts of joy, as minutes are of 
years, and drops of water are of the 
boundless deep, or they may be small 
imitations of the real thing, as glass gems 
are of diamonds, as words are of thought, 
as rights are of right. Our speech betrays 
how little we understand the meaning of 


1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Collected Poems, “C. L. M.” 

46 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

joy. We say we enjoy ourselves. Or, by 
way of making our language more accu¬ 
rate, we query, “Did you have a good 
time?” This reference to the calendar 
is an unconscious notation of the tran¬ 
siency of the enjoyment. And because 
we have come to look on joys as tricks 
that make life bearable, as bits of spice 
that help to make palatable the common 
meal of which we are forced to partake, 
we fail to think of joy as leaven that 
leaveneth the whole of life. Our joys 
may be the grave of our joy. Joy is not 
an importation for which duty is col¬ 
lected at the counters of sin; it is not a 
more or less stagnant pool caused by 
artificial irrigation. It is, and ought to 
be, a condition of character. Jesus had 
in his thought those who make up their 
minds to seek for enjoyment in life. To 
him it would matter but little whether 
people bluntly said, “Let us eat, drink, 
and be merry, for to-morrow we must 
die” (the modern interpretation of which 
is, “You may as well have a good time 
now, for you’ll be a long time dead”), 
or whether they assert in more measured 
47 


CHRIST AND 


terms that “rational selfishness and 
rational unselfishness tend to coincide.” 
There is something spurious about such a 
partnership of self-loving and self-giving. 
What Christ would at once inquire is, 
“Where is the emphasis?” Some one has 
said that democracy is self-government, 
provided you know where to put the 
emphasis: first, it is self-government ; sec¬ 
ond, it is se\i-government. Jesus had just 
this idea in mind when he said: “Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He 
did not militate against self-love; he did 
not trample on self-respect or self-esteem; 
he did say he would be satisfied if self- 
love and neighbor-love were equally strong 
in our hearts. And then he proceeded to 
demonstrate with his life that failure to 
invest self for others is to divest self of 
its worth. The person whose main idea 
of life is to enjoy himself has a wrong 
emphasis. Epicureanism says: He that 
saves life shall find it. Divorce and social 
injustice bear eloquent witness to the 
fruits this viewpoint yields. Yet this is 
a philosophy that strongly appeals to 
youth. Jesus deemed it utterly unworthy. 

48 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

Some people make up their mind that 
the best thing to do with life is to endure 
it. Submission to the inevitable rather 
than hot pursuit of the pleasurable is the 
path they choose. “Endure since you 
cannot cure/’ is their creed. You are 
a cog in the machinery of a universe you 
do not understand; therefore, put up with 
it stolidly. Resignation rather than recre¬ 
ation is the way they live. Many there 
be who try all their lives to travel Zero 
Street. “Try” bears emphasis, since few 
succeed. Existence that is cold persistence 
is too inhuman by far. It is easy for the 
Stoic to be the cynic. We were called 
into being without being consulted in 
the matter. We therefore refuse to be 
volunteers in life. We will do, as drafted 
men, or as prisoners, what we are com¬ 
pelled to do, but no spark of world-patriot¬ 
ism will we permit to glow. “The world 
owes us a living!” Thus runs the mind 
of the cynic. The man who is resolved 
merely to endure life has neither part 
nor lot with Christ. For Christ thought 
of man as an end in himself; not as a 
means to an end. For him life was not 
49 


CHRIST AND 


a sentence imposed but a sentiment em¬ 
bodied; not a burden to be borne, but a 
prize to be won. 

Others have made up their mind that, 
so far as possible, they will escape from 
life. The ascetic practices renunciation. 
He has lost heart with the world and all 
that therein is. Accordingly, sometimes 
physically and always spiritually, he shuts 
himself in to shut sin out, unconscious 
that he thus becomes “himself his own 
dark jail.” He seeks to attain happiness 
by ignoring rather than pursuing it. He 
seeks to live above the world by living 
apart from it. “Like one who murmurs 
happy words to torture his own grief” 
he asserts that the goal of life is escape 
from it. How strongly a view such as 
this can tug at the hearts of youth the 
history of monasticism reveals. 

What, now, was the choice which Jesus 
made in his youth and to which all his 
life rang true? He made up his mind 
that he was not in this world simply to 
enjoy life, nor to escape from it, nor to 
endure it. He resolved to enrich it! 
Neither recreation nor resignation nor 
50 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


renunciation was first with him; he pledged 
his life to redemption. He gave himself 
to Saviourhood. And this he did because 
he put heart into his thought. To have 
the mind that was in him we shall have 
to think as lovers of men as well as man¬ 
kind. When you look at life through his 
eyes and regard those who are chiefly out 
for enjoyment in life, the feeling that 
came to Dr. R. L. Swain will come over 
you: “To find oneself sitting at the feet 
of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, 
after living among the tombs as one mad 
for pleasure or wealth or popularity, is 
the last word in religion .” 2 When you 
see through his eyes, what appalls you 
about the person who merely puts up 
with life is that “the eyes that cannot 
weep are the saddest eyes of all.” For he 

“... found more joy in sorrow 
Than you could find in joy .” 3 

When eye to eye with him you see those 
who deem escape from life the attain¬ 
ment most worth while—and alas! how 

2 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from 
What and Where Is God? 

* Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Love Songs, "The Answer,” Sara Teasdale. 

51 



CHRIST AND 


many people use religion just for this!— 
you will give unstinted assent to Lyman 
Abbott’s words: “Religion has often been 
a restraint, a hindrance, a prohibition 
upon life. Such was the religion of the 
Pharisees in the first century, of the 
Ascetics in the Middle Ages, of the Puri¬ 
tans in the seventeenth century. That 
notion of religion Jesus repudiated. What¬ 
ever lowers vitality, lessens life, narrows 
it, impoverishes it, by whatever name it 
is called, whatever authority commands 
it, is anti-Christian. Christ declared his 
mission to be to develop life, enlarge its 
sphere, increase its activities, ennoble its 
character .” 4 What Jesus said of himself 
every follower of his knows: “I came . . . 
that ye might have life . . . abundantly.” 
Jesus made his choice in his youth. And 
the first great choice he made was to be 
a bringer of life and a lifter of it. 

II. “His Cross Our Creed” 

And because he chose as he did this 
youth lost his life in his youth. The world 

4 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from 
What Christianity Means to Me. 

52 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


has always felt the splendor of his death 
—often, unfortunately, to the neglect of 
his life. It has proved a fruitful source 
for theological theories and partisan con¬ 
troversies. But when the reign of God 
is finally established in the earth men 
will sense as we seldom do now how God¬ 
like was Christ’s thought that for the 
sake of life one can well afford to give 
life up. The life of Jesus spoke where 
language cannot follow. But his death 
was the only climax that could fit a life 
so lived. For a Saviour is never more 
certainly crowned than when he is flung 
on a cross. For then the cross that was 
to take his life takes his life on. It 
holds us, willingly against our will; it 
will not let us go until we go with it! It 
elicits our reverence; it commands our 
allegiance; it haunts our selfishness; it 
puts to flight the strong littleness an army 
with banners could not stir. At every 
turn of our lives it comes to meet us and 
when we essay to behold it we see God 
face to face. What folly was in the minds 
of the men who thought as they nailed 
him there: “This is the end of him! No 


CHRIST AND 

more shall this dreamer molest us!” For 
lo, when they put him to death, they 
put him to life! “This Jesus . . . goeth on 
as before!” Twenty centuries have come 
out of eternity and in each of them the 
most critical have cast their eyes on him. 
But in him they find no fault. They 
observe neither spot nor blemish. His is 
a Personality that purges personalities. 
His is the habit of victory; he is wise 
in the ways of the meek. He emerges 
conqueror from every fray. Every gen¬ 
eration, as Charles Edward Jefferson ob¬ 
serves, has placed the crown on the brow 
of Jesus. And Renan was compelled to 
remark, “Whatever the surprises of his¬ 
tory, Jesus will never be surpassed.” 
What a success he made out of a life that 
apparently ended in failure! Apparently! 
For now we are beginning to grasp the 
meaning of his death. Ex-President Had¬ 
ley, of Yale, tells that when one of the 
great Southern orators was asked what 
was the most moving oration he had 
ever heard, he answered that it came 
from the lips of a blind Negro preacher, 
cultivated beyond most of his race, yet 
54 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


living and working quietly among them, 
who, after describing the crucifixion to 
his audience in language almost beyond 
the power of those who did not hear him 
to realize, concluded suddenly, after a 
moment’s pause, with the words: “Socrates 
died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ like 
a God!” 

And against the background of his 
death his life stands out the more. He 
lost his life to win ours. Yet his cruci¬ 
fixion brought his resurrection! “He 
lives again!” How his life grips souls! 
Never was the world more interested in 
his life. For a long time the Christian 
Church was content to focus thought upon 
doctrines concerning itself and its theology. 
But ever since David Friedrich Strauss 
wrote his Leben Jesu a steady procession 
of “Lives of Christ” has enhanced lit¬ 
erature, and in the realm of reading the 
New Testament is set on high. Historical 
criticism has so centered attention on 
Jesus that millions of “Lives” of Christ 
are now read in book form. But con¬ 
suming attention will be given Jesus only 
when millions of “lives” of Christ are 
55 


CHRIST AND 


read in human form, whose testimony 
shall be as of old: “I live; yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me.” Such living epistles, 
the New Testament assures us, will be 
at once intelligible and irresistible. Need 
we marvel if we read that the whole 
creation agonizes for this manifestation of 
the sons of God? 

“Not with shouting and singing. 

Exultant trumpet or drum. 

But with hearts like church bells ringing, 
Conqueror, we come! 

Devouring fire, invincible light! 

Builder of dawn on the ruins of night! 

Builder of music on the crystal halls of day, 
God, we are thine! Command and we obey !” 6 

Had he been some pious recluse, having 
his habitation in solitude, to whom heart- 
hungry folks had come to catch some 
glimpses of truth, of him too might have 
been said, “He was indeed the glass 
wherein the noble youth did dress them¬ 
selves.” But since he was in all ways 
tempted as we are and came through 
without sin, we have the right to say 

6 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Hymn of Free Peoples Triumphant. Herman Hagedom. 

56 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


of him that he is indeed the life in 
which the noblest youths do find them¬ 
selves. This is the testimony a man like 
John Stuart Mill had to give: “Religion 
cannot be said to have made a bad choice 
in pitching on this man as the ideal repre¬ 
sentative and guide of humanity; nor, 
even now, would it be easy, even for an 
unbeliever, to find a better translation of 
the rule of virtue from the abstract into 
the concrete than the endeavor so to live 
that Christ would approve our life.” 


57 


To man, propose this test: 

Thy body is at its best. 

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? 

—Robert Browning. 

Arise and fly, 

The reeling faun, the sensual feast, 

Move upward, working out the beast. 

And let the ape and tiger die. 

—Alfred Tennyson. 

God’s mightier beams are searching out 
The soul of life and lighting it. 

That his fair hosts may put to rout 
The foes that have been blighting it: 

Sweep clean, O Lord, and beautify. 

And come thou in and occupy. 

—John Oxenham. 


58 



CHAPTER III 
CHRIST AND THE BODY 


I. “One Who Was Known in Storms 
to Sail” 

In order to know all that was involved 
in his choice to live and to bring the 
“more abundant life,” there is a more 
startling thought for us to take to heart. 
The word was made flesh! The Gospel 
according to John abounds in beauty of 
speech. Of all the New-Testament writers 
its author would be least likely to de¬ 
tract from the glory of Christ. But he 
had to tell the truth. So he said that 
the word was made flesh. One wonders 
what was in his mind as he wrote that 
word. Westcott, in ponderous fashion, 
informs us that “flesh expresses here hu¬ 
man nature as a whole regarded under 
the aspect of its corporal embodiment, 
including of necessity the soul and spirit 
and belonging to the totality of man.” 
What percolates through these phrases is 
59 


CHRIST AND 


that flesh here means embodied person¬ 
ality, human nature as seen in the human 
body. Likely, this is just what the author 
meant to say. One can never be quite 
sure, however, for it may be that, out 
of deference to Christ, he stated the 
thought in his mind as mildly as possible. 
Other New-Testament writers appear to 
be less reserved. They tell us, for fear 
we should miss the very point they are 
most eager to make, that Christ “came 
in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Inter¬ 
pretations of our dreams and themes in 
unflattering terms of the “flesh” are not 
confined to Freud. One may read in the 
New Testament almost panicky expres¬ 
sions of fear of the flesh. “I know,” 
complains one, “that. . . in . . . my flesh 
dwelleth no good thing.” Warnings are 
sounded against “the lust of the flesh 9 
the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.” 
And we are assured that only those who 
“walk not after the flesh, but after the 
Spirit” live like God. 

It is worthy of notice, therefore, that 
the word “flesh” was used. Harmless as 
it falls upon our ears to-day, at the time 
60 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


it was written it was bound to suggest 
to those whose eyes it reached or those 
who heard it read the low, if not the 
vile. For in the thought of that day 
human nature as seen in the human body 
had no beauty nor comeliness that men 
should desire it. The body was sin. Hu¬ 
man nature was depraved. It cannot be 
that the writer did not know what this 
word would suggest to those to whom he 
wrote it. These people knew too well 
how often the flesh rode roughshod over 
the spirit. They feared the insurgent 
instincts that might at any time break 
the bands of culture and custom. 

Thus there arose in the early church 
a number of divisions that found the 
idea that God became flesh a stumbling- 
block and offense. Docetism, to which 
reference is made in the New Testament, 
denied the reality of the body of our 
Lord. It reflected the prevalent philo¬ 
sophical notion that matter is essentially 
evil. It thought of Christ’s body as a 
phantom, a mere make-believe. The 
Anchorites showed their contempt for the 
flesh by torturing their bodies. Their 
61 


CHRIST AND 


personal habits bore witness to their 
disregard for the body. Saint Anthony 
was never guilty of washing his feet; 
Saint Abraham for fifty years after his 
conversion washed neither face nor feet; 
Paula said: “A clean body and a clean 
dress means an unclean sour’; Saint 
Euphraxia joined a convent where one 
hundred and thirty nuns boasted that 
they never washed their feet and shud¬ 
dered at the mention of a bath. For the 
benefit of high-school students who major 
in chemistry, President Cutten quotes 
Dr. Dumas, who figured that the formula 
for the odor of sanctity was C 6 H i2 0 2 . 
Nor is it in the Middle Ages alone one 
so finds the body despised. The hymn 
(?) numbered 432 in the hymnal used in 
Methodist churches begins with this invi¬ 
tation : 

“Come on, my partners in distress, 

My comrades through the wilderness. 

Who still your bodies feel.” 

It is not to be wondered at that there 
still are those who with secret loathing 
regard these bodies of ours and who 
62 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


stand aghast in the presence of human 
nature. The “new paganism” of our 
day is dominated by the senses. Yet to 
the Christian the body is the temple of 
the Holy Ghost, which, being interpreted 
means, The body is the temple of the 
holy God. Into the mouth of King 
Richard III Shakespeare puts these words: 

“Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so. 
Let hell make crooked my mind to answer it.” 

Some surpass this creed of Richard and 
of those who let the body lord it over 
them. They not merely conform the 
mind to the body but destroy the soul 
for it. Here lies the danger of those cults 
that concern themselves with telling us 
exactly how to keep well. To right the 
body and slight the soul may build up 
the animal kingdom but it can never 
build the kingdom of our God. Others 
would neglect the body for the soul. 
They have lost hope that the word of 
God can become flesh in us. But for 
the Christian the body is crucial in im¬ 
portance. How superb is that record 
about our Lord—“He spake of the temple 
63 


CHRIST AND 


of his body”! The Christian realizes that, 
because of the eternal fitness of things, 
“we must all appear before the judgment 
seat of Christ to receive the things done 
in the body.” Purity is not contempt 
of the body for the sake of the soul, but 
control of the body in the interest of God. 

II. “Till All This Earthly Part of 

Me Glows With Thy Fire Divine” 

The writer once heard a soap-box orator 
entertaining a crowd. He argued on this 
fashion: “God made us. He put in our 
blood the fire of desire. He put in our 
veins hatred and the craving for revenge. 
He made us selfish and self-seeking. We 
are what we are because he made us so. 
Hence, why worry? Why exert yourself? 
Take things as they come and let it go 
at that!” All hail to the status quo! One 
wonders why such a man should trouble 
to speak at all and what sort of verdict 
pathologists would pronounce upon him. 
Yet consider how many act on the assump¬ 
tion he so bluntly proclaimed! How often 
we hear people say, “0, well, it is human 
nature”! They say so, never suspecting 
64 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


the pathetic humor they speak. As if 
the nature they boast of really were 
human , when none can make a doubt as 
to just what it is! Let them add “e” to 
“human,” pronounce “human” “humane,” 
and see if that fits their case. Is it hu¬ 
mane nature they have? The Christian 
comes to inquire what the body says 
about God. Is it an inhuman body or 
an unhuman one you have? Or do you 
present your body a living sacrifice, holy 
acceptable unto God? In Christ was the 
perfectly human, and the followers of 
Christ seek his humanness. The word 
was made flesh in him that the flesh 
might be made word. This description 
of Christ is the prescription for youth. 

The word was made young flesh. When 
Christ spoke God to men he did so in the 
body of youth. Not flesh chilled by years 
or broken by time, but alive with all the 
impulse and the power of youth: “Tempted 
as we are, yet without sin.” A physical 
expression of God! Let us not be hasty 
in denouncing psychoanalysis. Certain 
phases of it we may well be wary of. Its 
emphasis on sex will not long endure the 
65 


CHRIST AND 


light. We should all be on guard against 
charlatans who come as practitioners. 
But it is high time that some facts are 
clearly perceived. Instincts are a vital 
part of the material out of which life is 
built. We must see with Browning that 
“from flesh unto spirit man grows, even 
here on the sod under sun.” Instincts 
can be molded into habits that do not 
blaspheme life nor smite God in the 
face. 

If our bodies are to speak the word of 
God, we must be careful of them. The 
temple of the holy God must be both 
clean and fit. An ancient minstrel once 
put this sentence into his song: “I will 
dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” 
All of us should see that this is exactly 
what we do. The body belongs to God 
as surely as does the soul. What care we 
should have for it! The church has all 
too much neglected the body. To-day it 
is in danger of going to the other extreme. 
Scripture does not report that Jesus ever 
suffered from illness. Civilization will be¬ 
come Christian in the degree that disease, 
insanity, ignorance, and poverty are ban- 
66 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


ished from the earth. Christians must 
keep their bodies at highest efficiency. 

If our bodies are to be the word of God, 
we must be careless of them. No word 
is higher in Christian speech than the 
word “sacrifice.” “I beseech you . . . that 
ye present your bodies a . . . sacrifice.” 
“If your right hand offend thee, cut it 
off: if your eye offend thee, pluck it out.” 
He who best uses his body can best sur¬ 
render it. “This is my body . . . broken 
for you,” Calvary cries to the world. Men 
who give their bodies to God can give 
them up for God. Such men are more 
eloquent in death than ever they were 
in life. 

“But this my body with its wandering ghost 
Is nothing solely save an empty grange 
Dark in a night that owls inhabit most. 

But when the King rides by, there comes a 
change .” 1 

It matters much to the body whether God 
has his say in the heart. Here, then, is 
a fact to be kept clearly in mind. It 
was in a young body that God revealed 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Collected Poems —“C. L. M.,” John Masefield. 

67 



CHRIST AND 

himself. And in every body God desires to 
speak. 

III. “Thine Is the Quickening 
Power That Gives Increase” 

If one were to ask a Christian, “What 
have you a body for?” the answer thus 
would be, “To let God speak through 
it!” This is to say, the physical must 
obey the spiritual. But the physical can¬ 
not do so of its own accord. The psy¬ 
chologists call us psycho-physical. When 
philosophers discuss us they speak of 
interaction. They mean to say with 
these terms that you cannot separate our 
bodies fron us (that is, in this world). 
There are many puzzles to “the mind- 
body problem.” But one thing is sure: 
they belong together. Were it possible 
here to separate one from the other, 
neither would be left! To speak of the 
body without naming the mind or will 
may mean emphasis, but not accuracy. 
We usually assume that which we fail 
to mention. The will makes the body go. 
The body will not do God’s will unless 
we will it. The question suggested by 
68 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


Jesus is ever asked of us: Do we will God’s 
will? 

But at present the will is in bad repute. 
For generations past many books appeared 
on the will. ^4c// was the keynote struck 
at young people’s gatherings. That it 
was time for action the World War later 
proved. When we emerged from the war 
the church repeated this word in accents 
undreamed of before. Movements and 
drives became the order of the day. In 
the rush we almost forgot that where 
there is no vision—especially vision of 
Him—wills are sure to perish. 

What religionists all but missed psy¬ 
chologists perceived. The achievements of 
psychology ought to command our respect. 
We know but little about much of our¬ 
selves. The psychologists are the Chris¬ 
topher Columbus-es who have set out 
with frail barks upon the seas of con¬ 
sciousness. They are seeking the unex¬ 
plored continents of personality. So vast 
are these seas that it will be a long while 
before they have been circumnavigated. 
The task is bewildering and difficult. 
Sometimes they think they sight land, 
69 


CHRIST AND 


only to find a mirage luring them on. 
But already they are able to report some 
valuable facts. Of course not all their 
reports are facts. When they tell us that 
most of us is most of the time submerged 
we do well to question their statement. 
But when these searchers on the seas of 
consciousness tell us of contrary currents, 
of gulf-streams that run alongside each 
other but not along with each other; of 
dual personalities, depicted in our litera¬ 
ture as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; when 
they tell us of whirlpools, where person¬ 
ality, if such it may be called, is a raging 
surge, sucking out its own life; split per¬ 
sonalities, divided against themselves, we 
know of a surety that they speak the 
truth. For anyone who goes through life 
with his eyes open can verify their facts. 
Now, despite the babel of tongues with 
which psychology often speaks, one word 
comes in unison, and it is this we need 
to heed. “Imagine!” is the advice they 
shout to us everywhere. The former 
counsel to act is not discarded by them, 
but is prefaced now by this. Imagine! 
For we are weak-willed. The good we 
70 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

would we do not; the evil we would not 
we do. It takes imagination to set the 
will on fire! Of course it is easy to see 
that this word stands for several things. 
The psychologists speak of imagination, 
not in the Shakespearean sense, “in a fine 
frenzy rolling,” but to emphasize anew 
that the seer precedes the doer; that a 
prophet is made not by what he says 
but first by what he sees. We ought to 
discriminate between imagination and 
“vain imaginings.” Though not always 
clear, the difference still is real between 
the invisible and the impossible. Insight 
is might! When Bernard Shaw sneered 
that “the imagination of white mankind 
has picked out Jesus of Nazareth as the 
Christ” he spoke truer than he hoped. 
Young folks who come with candor into 
the presence of Christ ask, “What would 
Jesus do?” This comes to be their habitual 
question. They fancy him in those sit¬ 
uations in which they find themselves. 
For inner strength nothing compares with 
this Christian imagination. Use a new 
word, or put an old one to a new use, 
and at once it sounds as if you had a new 
71 


CHRIST AND 


idea. But what the psychologists mean 
Christians have long understood. When 
they are told that something must control 
our wills they agree, but they change the 
“something” into “some one.” They 
pray, “Prince of Peace, control my will.” 
Nor are they satisfied to imagine Christ 
in their place. They imagine themselves 
in the place of Christ! It is a daring 
thing to do—but the power of it passes 
imagining! The story goes that in France 
a wounded lad sat facing the image of 
the Christ. With strength ebbing away, 
he whispered as he looked at it: “Me 
too, Jesus; me too!” We suffer and live 
for the same reason Jesus suffered and 
lived. One who imagines oneself living 
instead of Christ will invest one’s body 
in the service of the soul. The psycholo¬ 
gists are right! By using imagination we 
arrive at life. 

Yet to say this is not to say all that 
needs to be said. Men should use their 
imagination, but they need to do some¬ 
thing more. Men should be up and doing, 
but as per the Parable of the Bull in the 
China-Shop, it is dangerous to do until 
72 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


you know what to do and why you ought 
to do it. Jesus, therefore, was not content 
with telling men to imagine. Nor did 
Christ rest satisfied with simply telling 
men to act. Believe! this was the counsel 
that mirrored Jesus’ soul. And when he 
spoke of belief he had no creed in mind. 
When beliefs were opinions that served as 
opiates, they frankly disgusted him. He de¬ 
nounced beliefs that soothingly offered 
escape from life. He lacked enthusiasm 
for men who use religion to dodge reality. 
He offered men a venture that demanded 
their all. He never let up in his search 
for men who were men of faith. And he 
never intends to let up. “When the Son 
of man cometh, shall he find faith on 
the earth?” It was this rugged word 
“faith” rather than “will” or “imagina¬ 
tion” that for him struck the keynote of 
life. Faith! For faith, as Dr. Fosdick 
defines it, is vision plus valor; it makes 
imagination and will one. Faith makes 
insight action and, in addition, increases 
our capacity for both. 

Christians, then, are people whose bodies 
express their faith. Young people who 
73 


CHRIST AND 


follow Christ will seek what Schauffler 
calls “Strong, vivid bodies drenched with 
soul .” 2 They alter the babel of instincts 
into the music of God. And thus the 
word becomes flesh. 

IV. “And Calming Passion’s Fierce 
and Stormy Gales” 

Many have taken in hand the catalog¬ 
ing of instincts. Formidable lists may be 
found. For our purpose let us remember 
what is the purpose of them. There appear 
to be four uses for which our instincts 
exist: self-preservation, reproduction, curi¬ 
osity, and the prevention of exhaustion. 
These instincts do not come with equal 
force to us all. In some the instinct for 
self-preservation is most pronounced. Of 
these some become stingy; some finan¬ 
ciers; many both! In others sex predom¬ 
inates. Instincts cannot be separated into 
watertight compartments; they interact. 
They are the raw material out of which 
and by which we get our habits. One of 
three things may be done with instinct. 


2 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Magic Flame and Other Poems. 

74 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

It may be degraded. It may find a savage, 
blind, explosive expression. It then seeks 
gratification regardless of consequences. 
It may be suppressed. It may be, and in 
many people is, imprisoned in the cellar 
of consciousness. It has a remarkable 
facility for jailbreaking. It usually tun¬ 
nels its way out in some subterranean and 
clandestine way. When you shut it in 
you do not shut it out. It results in all 
sorts of pathology. Those who thus try 
to put it out of mind often put the mind 
out. Impulse driven inward corrupts 
character. It may be sublimated , “the 
using of the surplus energy of an instinct 
(or of all of it) in substitutive activities.” 
Sublimation is not destruction. It does 
not abolish an instinct, but lifts it, or part 
of it, into forms our better judgment 
approves. It is not now subverted but 
converted into higher uses. It is directed 
in the purpose for which it exists or redi¬ 
rected toward a higher purpose. When an 
impulse is thus checked it is not wrecked. 
It now does not wear a mask to conceal 
its ugliness, but is clothed in new and 
lasting garments. It stands to reason 
75 


CHRIST AND 


that it is only by sublimation, and not by 
suppression or degradation, that the human 
can express the divine. Boehme, the old 
mystic, said that we should “harness our 
fiery energies to the service of the light.” 
It is by sublimation that our instincts 
come into their own. Habit is the sub¬ 
limation of instinct by means of environ¬ 
ment. 

We have here an old idea. If once for 
all we could realize that new terms and 
new descriptions for the most part stand 
for familiar experiences, much headache 
will be prevented. And yet where could 
one find a finer word than this? To sub¬ 
limate is, of course, to make sublime. 
Other words have been used for this. 
The word “convert” has often been used 
in this connection. Then there is the 
word that came with such power from 
the lips of Jesus: “For their sakes I sanc¬ 
tify myself.” But sanctification means 
cleansing and setting apart rather than 
lifting up. The word “doxology” is not 
alien to the idea. One would have to go 
far to find a better word than sublimation. 
Yet does not the phrase: “the more 
76 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


abundant life” give the idea better still? 
We need elevated life, but it must be 
energized. “Sublimation” is a new word 
for the eternal truth that we “must be 
born anew” if we wish to “put on the new 
man.” It would make an interesting 
study to go through the Bible in search 
of the instances of sublimation. Dr. 
Gunsaulus made much of Exodus 4. 4— 
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Put 
forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. 
And he put forth his hand, . . . and it 
became a rod in his hand.” He said that 
our impulses, often dangerous as serpents, 
once they are mastered become, not only 
harmless as doves, but actual channels of 
blessing. Passion becomes power. 

Impulse, as has been said, is part of 
the raw material out of which we fashion 
the soul. “The best habit,” said Rousseau, 
“is to form no habit whatever.” The 
answer to this is that no one can do with¬ 
out habit and live. The best habit is the 
habit of seeing life through Christ. Habit, 
to borrow Bushnell’s idea, is nature sub¬ 
limated by nurture. We all walk—this is 
instinct. We all have our peculiar gait— 
77 


CHRIST AND 


this is habit. We instinctively express 
ourselves, but the way we express our¬ 
selves is habit. We may well ask our¬ 
selves: Into which habits have my in¬ 
stincts grown? Have I sublimated, sup¬ 
pressed, or degraded them? And when 
you think of the body in its totality, 
this business of sublimation is seen to be 
the real task of youth. 

In the “Young People’s Temple” at 
Ocean Grove this inscription is found: 
“Sow a thought, reap an act; sow an act, 
reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a charac¬ 
ter; sow a character, reap a destiny.” 
But this is not wholly true. What counts 
is not that they are sown but where. Sown 
on barren ground they are of no use; 
sown in goodly ground the returns will 
be thirty, sixty, or an hundredfold. It is 
a question of investment. 

You have doubtless noticed the kin¬ 
ship, if not identity, of these two modern 
words: imagination and sublimation. By 
the one we increase our vision, by the 
other we increase our valor. Imagination 
makes life clear; sublimation lifts life up. 
Imagination finds itself in faith; sublima- 
78 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

tion finds itself in service. What, then, 
is the Christian answer to the impulse- 
problem of youth? This! To sublimate 
your body, invest it in the cause in which 
Christ invested his! He gave himself 
whole-heartedly to the cause of showing 
men God. Thousands have been crucified, 
but just one cross stands out. And why? 
Because in that body he lived like God! 
One who attempts so to live—short 
though he come of the goal—will not 
need to learn rules for the coptrol of his 
instincts or the mastery of his habits. 
He will, in the picturesque phrase of 
Professor Rauschenbusch, carry his police¬ 
man inside of him. He will “come clean”! 

“For every door of flesh shall lift its head. 
Because the King of Life is entered in.” 3 

* Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Magic Flame and Other Poems. Robert H. Schauffler. 


79 



Take on yourself 

But your sincerity, and you take on 
Good promise for all climbing; fly for truth 
And hell shall have no storm to crush your flight 
No laughter to yex down your loyalty ! 1 

—Edwin Arlington Robinson. 

“And I have felt 

A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts .”—William Wordsworth. 

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free.”— Jesus. 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
Collected Poems. 


80 



CHAPTER IV 
CHRIST AND TRUTH 


I. “Bless Thou the Truth, Dear Lord, 
to Me, to Me” 

The second great choice he made was 
to witness truth. Indeed, as we have 
seen, his was the conviction that he had 
been born to do this. To say that Christ 
had to live all of his life in his youth is 
to say that he had to do all his thinking 
in his youth. And it was his own think¬ 
ing. Not that he did not profit by what 
the past could teach. His constant use 
of the sacred writings goes to prove that 
he did. But his mind was not controlled 
by tradition or custom. Men quoted 
Scripture at him—an ancient and pop¬ 
ular pastime—and demanded of him three 
cheers for the faith once delivered to their 
saints. But Jesus was most suspicious of 
a God whose delivery-system was so poor 
that it could not reach him directly. He 
lacked enthusiasm for having his mind 
controlled by dead men from their graves. 

81 


CHRIST AND 


He felt entitled to some opinions all his 
own. One phrase, often on his lips, shows 
his mind. For some inexplicable reason 
translators persist in dulling it. It is one 
of the most pointed comments that ever 
left his lips. The American Standard 
Version says that Jesus said, “Thou mind- 
est not the things of God.” This is some 
improvement over the King James ver¬ 
sion: “Thou savorest not the things that 
be of God,” but it hardly puts the matter 
in a pungent way. Dr. Moffatt has it: 
“Your outlook is not God’s,” and the 
Weymouth translation makes it clearer 
still: “Your thoughts are not God’s 
thoughts.” Would it not clarify our 
minds if we should simplify his words, 
“You do not think like God”? Just this 
was the matter with the men Christ met. 
Most of them thought like patriots, many 
of them like Jews, but only a few like 
God! It was no intellectual aristocracy 
Jesus came to proclaim. He respected 
men’s judgments. He often asked, “How 
think ye?” To be sure, he said this, not 
as discovering their thought but as 
directing it. Yet he believed it worth 
82 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

directing. He had a disconcerting way 
of associating a man’s heart with his 
head. He asked, “Wherefore think ye in 
your hearts?” He said they were slow 
of heart to understand. And when he 
wanted to point out the defect of their 
lives he said their real trouble was that 
they did not think like God. Others 
might debate whether or not we are able 
to think like God. Jesus, with startling 
simplicity, took that for granted. He 
diagnosed the malady with which they 
were afflicted as failure to think like God. 
By this time you have probably seen the 
point. He did his thinking in God. His 
ideas came from his Ideal. He thought 
religiously. He thought redemptively. He 
thought relatedly. And all who wish his 
mind must come to think like this. For 
him truth was no mere intellectual exer¬ 
cise. He expected it to produce results 
in life. He believed that truth would 
set men free. He was confident that 
truth would bring his disciples into unity. 
He did not mistake logic for thoughtful¬ 
ness. He knew the difference between 
intellect and intelligence. 

83 


CHRIST AND 


“But trained men’s minds are spread so thin. 
They let all sorts of darkness in; 

Whatever truth man finds, they doubt it; 
They love not light, but talk about it.” 1 


But Jesus was no raucous dogmatist. He 
had an open mind, and we who are his 
followers should at least keep ours ajar. 
“We forget sometimes that thought is a 
primary Christian duty. We forget the 
freedom of mind of Jesus, and his per¬ 
petual insistence on our thinking. . . . 
Jesus has committed us to finding out and 
incorporating in life all the truth there 
is in God. . . .A man who means to cap¬ 
ture the truth of things must be, as 
Plato tells us, ‘the spectator of all time 
and all existence, ever longing after the 
whole of things.’ ” Consider the prayer 
of our Lord: “Consecrate them by thy 
truth ... for their sake I consecrate my¬ 
self that they may be consecrated by 
the truth.” A Christian is a propagandist 
for truth, and he harbors no mental 
reservations about it. 


1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
The Everlasting Mercy, Masefield. 


84 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


II. “He’s True to God Who’s 
True to Man” 

Truth is not only something to enrich 
life with; it is something to enlist life for. 
Truth is not some domain where you 
can “stake out” a claim to “squat down” 
in comfort; it is a realm whose limits man 
knoweth not. Truth is attained rather 
than obtained. Truth is more than 
accord with reality. It is willingness so 
to accord. It is intellectual sincerity. 
As Bishop McConnell puts it: “There is 
a moral element in the pursuit of truth. . . . 
The willingness to follow truth at any 
cost, the willingness to abide by the truth 
and if necessary to die for it—all this 
is moral. The unselfishness which is 
necessary to arrive at certain results in 
thought is moral .” i 2 And another great 
thinker says: “We know the type of 
man who on the whole gets nearest to 
truth. It is not the cleverest. It is, I 
think, the sincerest.” Truths may be 
obtained. But truth must be attained. 
It is one thing to boast, “I have the 


i Religious Certainty, p. 152. The Methodist Book Concern. 

85 



CHRIST AND 


truth.” It is another thing to know, “I 
am the truth!” Ordinarily, this fact had 
best be witnessed by our works rather 
than our words. On occasion, however, it 
may be necessary for us to assert “the 
uprightness of our integrity.” Truth is 
personal rather than impersonal. It is 
our reaction toward reality. Lynn Harold 
Hough tells of a lad who said to his teacher, 
“I deny the fact!” and hints that this is 
worse for the boy than for the fact. But 
it is bad for both. Only truthfulness can 
fulfill truth. The ultimate finality in the 
realm of truth is a person who will not 
lie. Only the spirit of truth can lead the 
world into all truth. While many are 
“ever learning, never able to come to a 
knowledge of the truth,” the race has 
progressed because some have given them¬ 
selves unstintedly to the search and the 
spread of truth. 

Jesus knew that character is the most 
effective contribution one can make to 
truth. Nothing will better serve to make 
intellect intelligence. Every young person 
of thought should recognize, and be 
comforted by, the fact that some prob- 
86 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

lems exist only because of knowledge. 
Once you know the problem of land, 
once you are aware that nine tenths of 
the habitable area of the world is con¬ 
trolled by one fourth of the human fam¬ 
ily, the whites, you come upon a multi¬ 
tude of questions that exhaust the human 
mind. Once you know the problem of 
food, once you see how inescapable is the 
query of Malthus as to how limited lands 
can support unlimited populations, you 
are at grips with an issue not easy to solve. 
Once sense the problem of wealth and get 
clearly into your mind that wealth is not 
a material we can divide up but that it 
is a process we must unite in, and you 
fall heir to questions the best minds 
wrestle with. Once feel the problem of 
labor, once learn that it is less a question 
of how to get an equitable share of the 
products of industry and more how to 
save increased wages from being sub¬ 
merged by diminished money values, and 
you are face to face with questions that 
can never come to be solved by having 
open shop. Once grasp the science of 
power, once perceive that the air that 
87 


CHRIST AND 


gives us breath contains the TNT that 
stops it, and you will know that the 
interrelating of force and power is not a 
perfected art. Once know the problem of 
government, once be clear that wisdom 
shall not die with the existing theories 
of democracy, and you will have the con¬ 
vincing sensation that there are more 
things in heaven and earth than politicians 
have dreamed of. Once you know the 
problem of personality, once you are sure 
that thought, feeling, will, self-conscious 
and self-directing mind, is central to all 
of life, you will be in a maze of educational 
and psychological confusions, to mention 
but a few, from which no one thus far has 
extricated us. Once you know the prob¬ 
lem of religion, and see how universal 
and undying a thing is “the life of man 
in its superhuman relations,” a world of 
problems press in upon you and will not 
let you rest. These and kindred simple 
but profound facts must shortly come to 
be the requisites of a worthy education, 
but our very knowledge will beget 
problems undreamed of hitherto. The 
dilemma was humorously stated by the 
88 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


man who said: “To know is not to 
know.” 

“Shall a man understand, 

He shall know bitterness because his kind, 
Being perplexed of mind, 

Hold issues even that are nothing mated.” 1 

And, as if this were not enough, new 
problems are created by the very things 
we do to solve them. We find ourselves 
in a world that is confused both by its 
process and progress, its knowledge and 
ignorance. 

“Oh, we’re sunk enough, God knows; 

But not quite so sunk that moments 
Sure though seldom are denied us, 

When the Spirit’s true endowments 
Stand out clearly from his false ones.” 

It is for these “true endowments” Chris¬ 
tian youths strive. Confronting the con¬ 
fusions of our day, we rejoice to know 
that character counts most. “Not by 
might, nor by power, but by my spirit.” 
Character sheds light on the hidden things 
of life. Without it “our eyes are holden 
that we cannot see.” With it “the meek 

‘From Abraham Lincoln, by John Drink water; permission 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers, Boston and New York. 

89 



CHRIST AND PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


inherit the earth.” Character is the sur¬ 
passing contribution toward solving the 
problems that puzzle us most. Apart 
from character, they never can be solved. 
We are grateful to God for character 
that is eager for the truth. Slowly but 
surely we are outlawing intellectual cow¬ 
ardice. In the creed of modern apostles 
is written in letters of gold: “I will follow 
truth wherever it may lead me.” That 
the man who will not change his mind 
chains his mind is becoming evident. 
Neither the church nor the creed nor the 
Bible is to-day taboo. Character that 
seeks for facts with a passion for honesty 
is an earnest of the promise of the reign 
of God on earth. We thank God that 
in Christ’s presence we feel the fallacy 
of falsehood and subscribe to the spirit 
of truth. 


90 



These things shall be; a loftier race 

Than e’er the world hath known shall rise 
With flame of freedom in their souls, 

And light of knowledge in their eyes. 

—John A. Symonds. 

Most blest 

He who has found our hid security, 

Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest. 
And hear our word, “Who is so safe as we? 

We have found safety with all things undying !” 1 

—Rupert Brooke. 

The false prophet exposes that he may exploit 
his age; the true prophet portrays that he may 
purge it .—Albert Parker Fitch. 

Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. 

— Paul. 

1 From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, copyrighted, by 
Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. Used by permission. 


92 



CHAPTER V 

CHRIST AND PROGRESS 

I. “Each Sees One Color of 
Thy Rainbow Light” 

One day Progress stood in the presence 
of tradition. The Pharisees had caught the 
disciples eating with unwashed hands. 
They complained about it to Jesus: “Why 
walk not the disciples according to the 
traditions of the elders?” And Jesus 
answered them: “Ye make the word of 
God of none effect through your tradi¬ 
tions.” One hears in all the Gospels the 
echoes of this strife. To-day, as then, the 
conflict is on. And long before Christ 
came, the traditionalist fought the pro¬ 
gressive. Yet it is doubtful if ever there 
was a day when young people were so 
inevitably thrust into this combat. Upon 
their attitude and spirit the success of 
Christ’s cause depends. 

Let us make sure of the facts. The 
93 


CHRIST AND 


priest and the prophet have always been 
at odds. The priest conserved the reli¬ 
gious values of the past. He ministered 
to men’s souls with creeds, ceremonies, 
temples. Much credit is due the priest 
for the service thus performed. His labors 
have enriched mankind. But the prophet 
could not content himself with what the 
past produced. He believed, as Pastor 
Robinson told the Pilgrim Fathers, that 
new light was yet to break from the 
Word of God. He hungered and thirsted 
for a righteousness which ritual and creed 
left unsatisfied. He did not nervously 
point to some passage in a book saying 
“Thus saith the Lord,” but his soul was 
on fire with a conviction that he felt to 
be divine. He was an adventurer into 
unexplored realms. He was a “pioneer 
soul who blazed his path where highways 
never ran.” In the Bible and elsewhere 
one reads of this constant conflict be¬ 
tween prophet and priest. The priest was 
all for tradition; the prophet all for some 
truth in the light of which tradition 
seemed of small consequence. The prob¬ 
lem has been how to bring prophet and 
94 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

priest together. For we need the experience 
of the ages gone and the courage to invade 
the new. Every Christian needs to be 
both prophet and priest; priest, to hold 
us to the faith of our fathers; prophet, 
to lead us to the faith of our children. 
Alas! in many church leaders this fusion 
has not occurred. Some of them have 
their labels mixed: a man who is wholly 
a priest talks of himself as a prophet. 
To conform to the past is orthodox; to 
brush past the past is heretical. To com¬ 
bine in himself the function alike of 
prophet and priest is the task of the 
progressive. 

And he is the mediator in other ways. 
Two historic events have served to deepen 
division: Calvinism and evolution. Both 
of these have in course of time been 
greatly modified. But their root ideas 
remain. According to Calvinism, man can¬ 
not initiate good. He finds himself in a 
world over which he has no power; all 
has been decided; what is must be. Man 
cannot hope to lift life; he is static; he 
stays put. To the Calvinist, fixation is 
not a vexation but a comfort. He glories 
95 


CHRIST AND 


in the thought that his ways are estab¬ 
lished of the Lord; that none of these 
things can move him. Now, none can 
make a doubt that certain things are 
fixed. This is true in nature and equally 
true in grace. The scientist can bank on 
the reliability of the universe. He has 
never a doubt on this matter. He is 
sure that the sun is not going to swap 
places with the moon. So it is with the 
souls of men. We can count on Christ 
yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. He 
never fails to prove a satisfying portion. 
Christ is fixed in Christianity. Thus it is 
readily seen that there is much to be 
said for the idea of fixation. But much 
can also be said for the idea of progress. 
This is emphasized to us by evolution. 
Progress, to be sure, is not inevitable. 
It has been and may be retarded. His¬ 
tory tells pathetic tales of how progress 
has been prevented. When evolutionists 
speak of the principle of progression they 
mean with this a law at the heart of the 
universe which, like any law, must be util¬ 
ized before it can be effective. It ought to be 
true that “the thoughts of men are widened 
96 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

with the process of the suns.” But it is 
only true of some. Would it were true 
of us all! Man is a becoming rather than 
a being. What he is is but an earnest of 
what he is to be. Evolution, with Living¬ 
stone, says that life may go anywhere, 
provided it be forward. See now how 
evolution differs from Calvinism. To it, 
man is not static but dynamic. He can 
grow. And if he can, he should. “It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be, . . . 
but we know that... we shall be.” It 
comes under the tongue of scientific re¬ 
port and says that all there is is on the 
go—and on the come! Though a per¬ 
son mumble a creed that admits of no 
progress, his life contradicts his lips. 
For, to use the phrase most in use, he is 
forever trying to “better himself.” Prog¬ 
ress is embedded in every gospel page: 
“Thou art Simon, thou shalt be Peter”; 
“First the blade, then the ear, then the 
full corn in the ear”; “The kingdom is 
like a leaven that leaveneth the whole.” 
Thus the problem of the Christian is not 
only the past and the future, but truth 
that is settled and truth that must yet 
97 


CHRIST AND 


be reached. He must weld harmoniously 
progress and tradition. 

With still another conflict we are at 
present concerned. Calvin and his fol¬ 
lowers used to use Pauline terms: “elec¬ 
tion,” “foreordination,” “predestination,” 
and the like. What did they mean with 
these words that sound so weird to us 
now? They held these words to stand 
for exclusiveness. Only a few could ever 
hope to be saved. No one had a choice 
in the matter. A sovereign Deity had a 
right to his favorites. Out of all his 
creatures he had chosen a few to be eter¬ 
nally blest and all the rest of men were 
to be damned forever. Talk such as this 
sounds strange and far-off to us now. 
But only a century ago it was the prev¬ 
alent teaching of the Protestant Church. 
The idea that religion is chiefly the con¬ 
cern of the individual; that it is a pet 
possession, to be privately owned and de¬ 
fended against any and all comers remains 
with us to this day. The man who 
believes that his faith was once for all 
delivered to the saints of which he is 
one brooks no interference. If you con- 
98 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

tradict his belief, you commit sacrilege. 
He has the profound conviction that your 
failure to agree with him entitles you to 
hell. There is much to be said for the 
man who feels this way. Religion is at 
heart a very intimate matter. No one 
can have it for you; you must have it 
for yourself. But though this is true of 
religion, it is not all of the truth. For 
religion is also a very social matter. It 
concerns not one, but all. Evolutionary 
thinking brings one around to this. Na¬ 
ture plays no favorites. The sun shines 
for the just and the unjust; the law of 
gravitation applies alike to all. A stone 
falling from a building under construction 
does not stop to inquire whether the per¬ 
son upon whose head it descends is a 
fundamentalist or a modernist. Psychol¬ 
ogy meanders through the secret places 
of our hearts and reports in a tongue 
that is strictly its own that we are all basic¬ 
ally alike. And Christianity, with which 
evolution so readily falls in line, is per¬ 
petually inclusive. Christianity boasts 
that “God so loved the world.” We 
bow the knee to “the Father ... of whom 
99 


CHRIST AND 


every family in heaven and earth is 
named.” Every knee must bow and 
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord. Every realm must come under 
his sway; “the kingdoms of the world shall 
be the kingdoms of our Lord”—the edu¬ 
cational, the economic, the political, all 
the kingdoms where men rule. It remains 
for the progressive to translate individual 
salvation into social faith. 

II. “Reclothe Us in Our Rightful 
Mind” 

The task now confronting the young 
Christian is to repair the breach. Prophet 
and priest, now asunder, must be yoke¬ 
fellows unto the Lord. Tradition and 
progress, now in a bloody arena, must 
serve a common cause. The individual 
and social gospels, now each clamoring 
to be heard, must harmoniously speak the 
good news of God. The lot of the pro¬ 
gressive Christian is not an easy one. 
Did he merely strive to keep the middle 
of the road, he would add insult to in¬ 
jury. He can do no balancing act to 
stand in with both sides. He must shift 
100 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


the emphasis from that for which each 
fights to that which they all need. He 
treads a lonely path that as yet is not 
popular. But though misinterpreted by 
both sides and constantly abused, he 
serenely follows his course in the high 
confidence that God and the calendar are 
on his side. 

In his efforts to shift the emphasis to 
a different plane he brings upon his head 
the wrath of all concerned. The funda¬ 
mentalist hurls his anathemas. In a day 
of hysteria such as that in which we live, 
his curses are as baneful as the papal 
curse was once. He has a vocabulary, a 
selected stock of words, and when he 
utters any one of them the mob cries 
“Crucify him!” of the man at whom it 
is hurled. Students have observed that 
we are a nation of watchwords. Let one 
instance suffice to show what a caption 
will do. The fundamentalist shouts 
“Higher critic” at those who differ from 
him. At once the multitudes are duly 
impressed. Could a man be anything 
lower than to be a higher critic? There 
are millions of Protestants in this land 
101 


CHRIST AND 


to-day whose hatred has been trained to 
respond to this phrase. The more ignor¬ 
ant the man the keener is his hatred. 
It was unfortunate that this word ever 
came to be used. For the word “criticism” 
suggests the carping and nagging. And 
the word “higher” suggests inferiority. 
But as a matter of fact, this is farthest 
from its thought. There are literary, 
artistic, and dramatic critics. Every word 
of their criticism may be praise, yet they 
are known as critics. It is this technical 
sense that must be borne in mind. The 
study of the text of the Bible came to be 
called “lower” criticism, and the study of 
the book itself, by whom the books of it 
were written, when and why they were 
written, and how they came together, was 
called “higher” criticism. How different 
that is from the accepted viewpoint, care¬ 
fully and assiduously fostered by the 
fundamentalist, that the aim of higher 
criticism is “to tear the Bible to shreds”! 
It would have been much better, as some 
one has suggested, had the lower criticism 
been called the textual, and the higher 
criticism the literary study of the Bible. 

102 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


For that is all it is! Upon the progressive 
thinker who calls him forth from his 
allegiance to the past, to tradition, to 
exclusive individualism, the fundamentalist 
pours the vials of his wrath and at him 
he hurls the slogans which the narrow 
and ignorant among us account condemna¬ 
tions divine. 

But if the fundamentalist calls the 
progressive an extremist, the extremist 
spurns the progressive as he spurns the 
fundamentalist. It should be stated, in 
all fairness, that while the fundamental¬ 
ists are many, the extremists number few. 
Yet they exert an influence out of pro¬ 
portion to their numbers. They are 
entirely out of patience with what the 
past has produced. In The Mind In the 
Making , by James Harvey Robinson, a 
book that all in all is one of the greatest 
that has recently been written, he frankly 
owns to and advocates this total rejec¬ 
tion of the past. He says: “My own 
confidence in what President Butler calls 
‘the findings of mankind’ is gone,” and he 
deliberately sets to work to point out 
“an easy and relatively painless way in 
103 


CHRIST AND 


which our respect for the past can be 
lessened so that we shall no longer feel 
compelled to take the wisdom of the ages 
as the basis of our reforms .” 1 There are 
those in the Christian Church who hold 
this self-same view. They look upon the 
Bible which has come down from the 
past with a rich and unique record of 
religious experience as an outworn docu¬ 
ment which can be of no use in the days 
that lie ahead. They have no patience 
for those who take Jesus for their standard. 
Having developed the critical spirit to 
excess, they seize upon psychoanalysis in 
the hope that by its aid they may be 
able to find in the character of Jesus those 
flaws which his enemies thus far have 
been unable to find. The “error-and-trial 
method ” has become an obsession with 
them. They think that humanity thus 
far is a terrible mistake.' Some day, say 
they, what we know as personality will 
be as obsolete as the Neanderthal man 
is now and men will regard the civiliza¬ 
tion which we have thus far gained so in¬ 
sipid that no one will then give it more 


1 Harper & Brothers, publishers. 

104 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


than a passing thought. The man who 
tries to build a golden morrow out of a 
leaden past deserves only their sneers. 

Despite these fierce antagonisms the 
progressive follows the truth as God gives 
him to see it. He follows truth wherever 
it leads him. Does it lead to the past? 
Then he reverts to that. Does it lie in 
the future? Then he is on the march. 
But from first to last he is a seeker after 
unity. He wants the breach repaired. 
He does not demand of men uniformity. 
He does not say to those who differ from 
him, “Unless you submit to my creed I 
will cast you forth from my church and 
out of my school . 55 Nor does he demand 
that all that we now account valuable 
shall be thrown overboard en masse. He 
knows a more excellent way. And to 
this he summons all parties. The funda¬ 
mentalist appeals to his Pope or his 
Bible. The fundamentalist among Roman 
Catholics tests everything by the church, 
which finds highest expression in its bap¬ 
tized Caesar. The fundamentalist in the 
Protestant Church tests all things by the 
Bible, which for him is most deeply ex- 
105 


CHRIST AND 


pressed in Calvinistic theology. The pro¬ 
gressive holds to the church, the Bible, 
and the new. But these and all other 
things he puts to a different touchstone. 
He asks that everything shall he tested by life! 

III. “Were Still in Heart and 
Conscience Free” 

The progressive Christian shifts the em¬ 
phasis from belief to life and attempts 
to convince all others of the need of this. 
To the modern Christian life comes first. 
Accordingly, the progressive tries to trans¬ 
late all things into terms that are alive 
to the people of our day. He believes 
that the word should be flesh. As in our 
bodies there are vestiges of organs that 
have outlived their usefulness, so the 
church carries within it things that have 
a name that they live, but are really dead. 
What wonder the modern Christian tries 
to be quit of them? Life is forever an 
adjustment to new conditions. The Chris¬ 
tian finds himself in the day of science. 
John Wesley thought of the world as his 
parish; the scientist thinks of the uni¬ 
verse as his laboratory. No doubt men 
106 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

make claims for science that scientists 
never make. However this may be, 
science holds the attention of the most 
of us. People are more and more getting 
the scientific habit of mind. But science 
itself depends upon character, upon intel¬ 
lectual honesty, the willingness to know 
the truth, and the love for its spread. 
Christianity is the word of God concern¬ 
ing this basic thing. The modern Chris¬ 
tian cannot speak in disregard of science. 
Nor can he live in disregard of it. Chris¬ 
tianity, which was not first something to 
believe, but first Some One to follow, 
cannot live in modern conditions with 
mediaeval habits, thoughts, or institutions. 
But once you test things by life you are 
bound to test them by growth. For this 
is what life is. The Christian experience 
is not a static thing. It gathers into its 
treasures things both old and new. The 
distinctive power of Christianity is this 
ability to graduate. Other religions boast 
that they stay put. 

It would be strange indeed if the growing 
life of the Christian’s soul did not affect 
his creeds. This is bound to be so, if 
107 


CHRIST AND 


for no other reason than that language 
itself grows and litters with its outworn 
shells the ways of literature. Words 
change meaning. When the King James 
version of the Bible was written “con¬ 
versation” meant not a man’s talk but his 
walk, that is to say, his conduct. Creeds 
were intended to express life, and not to 
repress it. Now we are not foolish enough 
to suppose that creeds fall direct from the 
skies. They embody the findings of men 
who lived up to the truth they had. The 
progressive Christian, then, is respectful 
toward the creeds. But he knows that 
they cannot suffice. “In Divinity and 
Love what’s best worth saying can’t be 
said.” And, of course, this growing life 
is expressed in his view of the Bible. The 
Bible is not for him the finished Word 
of God. It is a growing, living thing. 
Such a view of the Bible shocks funda¬ 
mentalists. They say: “The Bible is 
either God’s message to men or there is 
no message from God except as it comes 
out of natural theology.” But any Chris¬ 
tian should know that such a statement 
is not true. Prayer means not only that 
108 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

we speak to God but that God speaks to 
us. And messages from God come in 
other ways. We believe in the Holy 
Spirit—God in his world. Only moral 
deafness can prevent our hearing him. 
God did not quit speaking when he had 
given the last thought to the last Bible 
writer. Nor did he speak to all of them 
the same exalted truths. He spoke “in 
divers portions and in divers manners,” 
according as those to whom he spoke 
were able to understand. He has not 
gone dumb. He still speaks. But we are 
slow of heart to understand. He not 
infrequently speaks through a fundamen¬ 
talist. And often through some extremist 
his word leaps at our hearts. He has 
even been known to speak through Roman 
Catholic priests. But the Bible is not 
the last word God has to say. He says 
a much higher word to us in Jesus Christ. 
Never man spake like this! We are 
thankful for the Christ of revelation, the 
Christ of the Bible page. We rejoice for 
the Christ of history, the Master of the 
church which is to be God’s bride. But 
we are most of all thankful for the Christ 
109 


CHRIST AND 


of experience, the living, eternal Christ, 
who enters into our lives, and leads us 
out and on and up. 

This growing life of the soul pervades 
theology. People often say that folks 
no longer are interested in theological 
questions. Nothing could be further from 
the truth. Every pastor knows how eager 
young people are to be able to give a reason 
for the faith that is theirs. They are 
interested in the person and work of 
Christ. They want to know the truth. 
But the truth concerning this is not 
cheaply picked up. It cannot be con¬ 
veyed in a book or sermon. But the way 
in which the truth can best be revealed 
may be pointed out. This is that the 
old shibboleths must be discarded and 
the issues stated in words all may under¬ 
stand. It is for this that the young Chris¬ 
tian must contend. Your theological 
conclusions are of small concern to him; 
he can live in the presence of many and 
varied opinions. But he asks that the 
problems be put into words that admit 
of no doubt. What a hero was the author 
of the Gospel of Saint John! He dared to 
110 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

restate the life of our Lord in language 
that was suited to the thought of his day. 
Men had been talking of Jesus as the 
“Messiah.” But in the world of the 
writer the live word was “Logos,” not 
“Messiah.” And so this man spoke out 
in the term of the thinking of his day. 
He did not find fault with the Jews be¬ 
cause they had pictured Christ as the 
nation’s deliverer, for to this day Christ 
is the desire of the nations when they 
desire at their best. But he now pictured 
Christ as the Word Eternal, as the light 
of life. He no longer spoke of Jesus as 
a conqueror coming in the clouds. He 
spoke of Jesus as a persuasive argument 
winning men’s minds to a life more un¬ 
selfish, more honest and brotherly. So 
every generation must come to speak of 
Jesus in its peculiar tongue. We of the 
Christian Church can think of no other 
God save the One who lived in Christ. 
Our need for God is satisfied in him. 
But we cannot fancy our Lord ever asking 
people what we ask of them. The exag¬ 
gerated language employed by H. G. 
Wells contains a deal of truth: “Of all the 
111 


CHRIST AND 


blood-stained, tangled heresies which make 
up doctrinal Christianity and imprison the 
mind of the Western world to-day, not 
one of them seems to have been known 
to the founder of Christianity .” 1 2 It can¬ 
not be said enough that Christ sought 
“not assent to a form of words, but con¬ 
sent to a way of life.” He came to bring 
life and to bring life abundantly. And 
all he asked of men was that they should 
have the faith to live his kind of life: 
his life of quiet trust in, and ardent serv¬ 
ice for, a loving God, together with his 
life of unfailing love and unbounded sacri¬ 
fice for humanity. 

IV. “Peculiar Honors to Our King” 

The early church did not ask men to 
have faith in any creed or in “articles of 
religion.” The early church had only one 
requirement for admission, possession of 
the Spirit of Jesus, an inner and living 
experience of at-one-ment with him. The 
church should with open arms receive any 
man who has the spirit of Jesus, who is 


1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 

God the Invisible King, p. 29. 

112 



THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


willing to lead his life, whatever his creed 
may be. Anything in the Bible, in creed 
or theology, that does not accord with 
his spirit, is of little or no concern to the 
follower of Christ. He may dispute any 
detail so he is true to his life. And so the 
young Christian, respecting the old and 
the new, the personal and the social, 
brings the claims of each to the test of 
life. What sort of life? you ask. The 
life of the Lord Jesus. “We needs must 
love the highest when we see it.” 

“Subtlest thought shall fail and learning falter, 
Churches change, forms perish, systems go. 
But our human needs they will not alter, 

Christ no after age shall e’er outgrow. 

“Yea, Amen! O changeless One, thou only 
Art life’s guide and spiritual goal. 

Thou the light across the dark vale lonely— 
Thou the eternal haven of the soul.” 

We do not care whether a man correctly 
agrees with a creed. We do care that 
he shall strive to approximate Christ’s 
life. He may not “make up his mind, 
but he must make up his life.” And so 
we say to people: “Are you willing to lead 
his life? Are you willing to live for the 
113 


CHRIST AND 


truth, and, if need be, die for it? Are 
you willing to stand alone against 
intrenched privilege, even when it is bol¬ 
stered by both church and state? Are 
you willing to follow “hungry and athirst 
the lonely exaltation of your mind,” to 
stand alone against popular opinion as he 
stood alone except for the good company 
of God? Are you willing to seek the 
good of men who seek to harm you? 
Have you the forgiving spirit? Do you 
sacrifice? Do you overlook injuries done 
to you and never overlook injuries done 
to the Holy Spirit? Will you give up 
your ambitions for the sake of brother¬ 
hood? And above all, dare you dream, 
and give substance to your dream, that 
all of life can really be brought under the 
reign of the Father God? Are you man 
and woman enough to adopt as the business 
of your life the bringing of business and 
statecraft, education and pleasure, art and 
literature from the basis of willful self- 
seeking to the basis of holy love? If so, 
yours is the Spirit of Jesus, and not all 
the creeds of creation can deny him his 
place in your heart. 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


Like Wesley, progressive Christians are 
“offensive and defensive with every good 
soldier of Jesus Christ”—defensive against 
all those who try to reduce Christ’s Spirit 
to some hocus-pocus emotion or to limit 
him to a creed or to deny his right to 
reign, offensive for the big task of bring¬ 
ing religion out of the mists of meta¬ 
physics into the light of life, so that a 
bleeding world, sinsick and sick of sin, 
may live in the Spirit Divine. 

“Holy Ghost, dispel our sadness. 

Pierce the clouds of nature’s night; 

Come, thou Source of joy and gladness. 

Breathe thy life and spread thy light: 

From the height which knows no measure. 

As a gracious shower descend. 

Bringing down the richest treasure 
Man can wish, or God can send.” 


115 



Many men 

May tower for a white-hot moment, when 
The wild blood surges at a sudden shock, 

But when, insistent as a ticking clock, 

Blind peril haunts and whispers, fewer dare . 1 

—John G. Neihardt. 

Greatly begin! though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime— 

Not failure, but low aim is crime. 

—James Russell Lowell. 


“What do I owe 
To Christ, my Lord, my King? 

That all my life 
Be one sweet offering; 

That all my life 
To noblest heights aspire. 

That all I do 

Be touched with holy fire.” 

—John Oxenham 2 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from 
The Song of Hugh Glass. 

s From Hearts Courageous, The Abingdon Press. 


116 



CHAPTER VI 
CHRIST AND OUR TASK 


I. “Give Our Hearts to Thy 
Obedience” 

When Christ sent forth his disciples, 
two by two, he said to them, “I am send¬ 
ing you out like sheep among wolves.” 
The history of consecration demonstrates 
that this is just what he has been doing 
with his disciples ever since. He sends us 
as sheep among wolves, that we may 
change wolves into sheep. It is at this 
work that the lives that he masters are 
put. 

One New-Testament story suggests with 
what a task Christ comes to challenge 
youth in the day in which we live. The 
story is found in Acts. Ananias is its 
hero. He went to the street called 
Straight and called on the man called Saul 
and delivered to him Christ’s message by 
saying to him: “Saul, Brother!” A pho¬ 
nograph record of the way these two words 
were uttered would make one of the 
choicest treasures of the earth. What 
117 


CHRIST AND 


tender and beautiful emotion must have 
flowed through them. Ananias, out of a 
full and passionate heart, facing his 
would-be murderer, spoke the word that 
has perennial power to thrill the heart. 
Ananias probably did not suspect that 
there was anything thrilling in these 
words. When we set ourselves out to say 
thrilling things we are likely to lose the 
thrill in the saying of them. Words that 
fly like white hot sparks from the anvil 
of love blaze their way into hearts. The 
tremor in your voice that represents the 
passion of your soul is ten times more 
eloquent than an oration delivered with 
the genius of a Demosthenes. Only a 
flaming heart can fire smothered souls. 
Primarily, the language of the Christian 
is not the language of the head, but the 
language of the heart. It wasn’t any¬ 
thing unusual for Ananias to utter the 
word “brother,” and it didn’t sound un¬ 
usual to him. It was merely the language 
of his soul. To say “brother” is a habit 
of speech to which the Christian is ad¬ 
dicted. “Father” is the keyword of 
Christian life, “brother” is the keyword 
118 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


of Christian love. To speak one and not 
the other, is to be unchristian. We can¬ 
not know the Christian life until we speak 
its language well. 

How very strangely these words must 
have fallen on the ears of Saul, coming 
from the lips of one upon whom he looked 
as an enemy! Hitherto the word “brother” 
in this sense had not been in his vocab¬ 
ulary. The honored name in Judaism 
was Teacher, the honored name in Chris¬ 
tianity Brother. The great thing in 
Judaism was how much you know; the 
great thing in Christianity is how well 
you love. Saul’s ambition along Jewish 
lines had been gratified. They called 
him Teacher and he loved the sound of 
the name. Here and now occurred the 
third degree in the initiation of Saul into 
Christianity. He was hailed a brother 
by the man he sought to kill. The angels 
must have composed a new chant out 
of the music that floated into heaven 
when that word was first spoken to Saul. 
If the celestial poets did not write some 
new lyrics about this occasion, they missed 
a rare opportunity for genuine poetry. 
119 


CHRIST AND 


How it must have warmed the heart of 
Saul! Speech such as this is more than 
a speech; it is poetry and music all in 
one. “Saul, brother!” No wonder that 
at the sound of this word the scales fell 
from his eyes and he could see once more. 
It is because we are so unbrotherly that 
folks are blind to God. It is yet our task 
to open the eyes of the blind. 

“You see,” said the great Pope Innocent 
to Saint Thomas Aquinas, as they watched 
the priests carrying loads of gold into 
the Vatican, “you see, the day is gone 
when the church could say, ‘Silver and 
gold have I none.’ ” 

“Yes, holy father,” replied the saint, 
“and the day is also gone when she could 
say to the cripple, ‘Arise and walk.’ ” 
But it is still our task to do it. We 
must speak this word “brother” so effec¬ 
tively that men shall look upon the church 
as a brother beloved. That millions still 
look upon the Christian Church as an 
enemy to progress and liberty shows that 
we have not spoken the word sufficiently 
clearly nor sufficiently lovingly to acquaint 
them with the real intent of the Christian 
120 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


faith. Toward this very attitude of hos¬ 
tility we are to be brotherly 

“So, when thoughts of evil doers. 

Waken scorn, or hatred move. 

Shall a mournful fellow-feeling. 

Temper all with love.” 

II. “And We Have Come into Our 
Heritage” 

The use God makes of his disciples is 
to speak this word “brother” to all men. 
The early disciples did not come, ner¬ 
vously pointing the finger to some passage, 
saying “God loves you because it is 
written in a book”; they came with a 
glowing experience which ex-rayed itself 
into hearts. With this personal experience 
back of them, words that lay like dust 
upon the lips of the dry-souled scribes and 
Pharisees came throbbing out of the hearts 
of the disciples regnant with joy and 
thrilled the world into newness of life. 
God’s method in the spiritual realm is 
the injection of human personality. If 
brotherhood is ever to come, it must 
come from him, through us to others. 
God’s method thus brings us to the con- 
121 


CHRIST AND 


sideration of God’s men. Who shall have 
the honor of bringing the message of 
brotherhood to the world? It is only the 
Ananias type of disciples that can be 
used of God for this task. We do not 
know much about this man Ananias, but 
we know enough. We know that he was 
a disciple of Jesus and that he made full 
proof of his discipleship by obeying his 
Master’s call. That Ananias went at all 
shows the genuineness of his discipleship. 
At the call of his Lord he helped the man 
who would gladly have furthered his 
death. To think so much of our Lord 
that we will obey his voice when he calls 
us to the thoroughly disagreeable—that is 
to answer in due measure Christ’s ideal of 
discipleship. Jesus, I am sure, is anxiously 
scanning his church for men and women 
who will go where he sends them. Num¬ 
bers of young Christians sing, “I’ll go 
where you want me to go, dear Lord,” 
but have as a mental reservation “Pro¬ 
vided it suits me.” Suffer hardship with 
me, as a good soldier, said Paul, and a 
good soldier does not mind fighting in a 
muddy trench. Do we exempt even our 
122 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


church life from this everyday tragedy of 
having the unbrotherly attitude toward the 
world? If any man gets crooked with 
us, we have a yearning desire to get 
square with him. How small such 
behavior is compared with Ananias! The 
mind that was in Jesus was in him. 

We are not strangers to brotherhood. 
The spirit of brotherhood is popular—on 
paper. Evidences are not lacking that it 
has gone beyond this, that it is taking 
definite shape. This probably results from 
the higher estimate men are placing on 
themselves. They are no longer content 
with the “full dinner pail”; they are think¬ 
ing for themselves. This is the day of 
man. Neither tradition nor precedent can 
long stay man’s upward march. His soul 
is thrilled with the music of Paul’s key¬ 
note, “I press on.” Persecution but stim¬ 
ulates him to perseverance. Tribal bar¬ 
riers are less and less able to contain him. 
He is becoming a world-citizen. Nor is 
this the limit of his ambition. He is as 
yet a bit distorted in his utterance, but 
he is fast learning to repeat aright those 
words freighted with the fragrance of 
123 


CHRIST AND 


eternity, “Now are we the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be.” This is the normal language 
of the soul, and many a man is coming 
to speak it. Thus it is that wayfaring 
men, though fools in the appraisal of the 
intellectual aristocrat, do not err. 

But the masses of the people have not 
yet attained unto this. They are on the 
way, and it is ours to brother them home. 
In their anxiety for the new they are 
likely to neglect the true. They are in¬ 
clined to condemn things because of their 
age or commonness. Instead of making 
the secular sacred they make the sacred 
secular. There is no dearth of false 
teachers among these rising masses. But 
we are false to brotherhood if we assume 
that their falsehood is necessarily delib¬ 
erate. Happy for us if we see in the 
leaders of mass and class movements 
what Ananias saw in Saul—a brother 
who is false simply because he is headed 
wrong; false for want , not for hate of the 
truth. 

If we would be God’s men for God’s 
message of brotherhood, we must be saved 
124 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

men—even as Ananias was. That, you 
say, is a trite remark. But it is more 
right than it is trite, and right is as yet 
by no means trite. But is it as trite as 
you think? For the Christian concept 
of brotherhood is peculiar in this: that it 
centers in a living Saviour. Those English 
socialists were right: Jesus Christ made us 
brothers. Right relation to God means 
right relation to man. A godly man’s 
job is to bring mankind to manhood, 
and he is several degrees below manhood 
whose heart fails to grasp all mankind. 
Measuring men by the cross, he sees a 
brother in a sun-tanned son of Italy, 
a grizzly-bearded inhabitant of Africa, a 
cannibal, or some Hottentot to whom a 
bath is the event of a lifetime. And if 
distance lends enchantment to the view, 
he may test his brotherhood in sundry 
ways at home. His sympathy cannot 
merely be to feel with those who feel, 
but to suffer with those who suffer. He 
may come to feel that the trouble with 
his college training is that alluded to by 
Chesterton in his pun on Thackeray, that 
“he did not know enough ignorant people 
125 


CHRIST AND 


to have heard the news.” His expanding 
ideal of brotherhood—expanding because it 
centers in a living Lord—will cause him 
to grieve that he spoke so much of the 
purity of speech, and so little of the 
purity of air in the many sweatshops still 
extant where women and girls toil for 
starvation wages with emaciated and dis¬ 
eased bodies, under conditions scarcely 
less abominable than those endured by 
their forebears in the scorching brick¬ 
kilns of Egypt. Bergson tells us that 
“nations have developed their bodies be¬ 
yond the reach of their souls.” This may 
also be true of individuals. Men may 
develop their brains beyond the reach of 
their souls, as did Darwin regarding 
Shakespeare. A man may develop his 
brain beyond brotherhood, but a saved 
person cannot do so. He has large sym¬ 
pathy with groping minds and with 
blinded ones. He is not above the ignorant, 
simply ahead of them. The greatest is 
he who serves. So God’s men are like 
Ananias, brother to the enemy, the erring, 
the ignorant, the weak. Their foremost 
art is brotherhood. Their foremost creed 
126 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

is that all men are brothers, free in the 
slavery to Jesus Christ. There are many 
things the masses need to know, but they 
will not listen to us until we have first 
said to them what Ananias first said to 
Saul—“Brother.” And in a certain very 
vital way, God’s men are God’s messages, 
“to be read and known of all.” 

III. “So Purer Light Shall Mark 
the Road” 

Now, let us see what this message of 
brotherhood really is. It meant much to 
Paul; what does it mean now? Perhaps 
it is only a flight of fancy to say that this 
was in the mind of Ananias when he spoke 
the word, but it seems to me that two 
things were true of this word “brother.” 
It was a proclamation and a prediction , the 
fact of brotherhood and the faith of 
brotherhood. First, then, as to the proc¬ 
lamation. When we to-day try to inform 
men that they are brothers, they are just 
as puzzled as Paul was when Ananias 
first called him brother. They do not 
understand our meaning. Or is our 
trouble that we do not mean with it 
127 


CHRIST AND 


what we like to believe Ananias meant? 
To the man of the street an invitation to 
Christianity is an invitation to an emo¬ 
tional experience more than to a positive 
program. At best, it means to him an 
introduction to the King, not to the 
kingdom. If we tell the workingman that 
a life built upon hate is wrong, he will 
probably press the question and say that 
if hate is wrong for the individual life, 
so also is it for the economic; that, if we 
mean what we say, business and labor must 
cease to be battle and become brother¬ 
hood, and the competition of hate must 
be supplanted by the competition of love. 
Let us be honest and confess that the 
church, throughout the centuries, has put 
so much energy into the perfecting of its 
own organization and the protection of 
such cherished doctrines as those of apos¬ 
tolic succession, second blessing, or the 
existence of his satanic majesty, that it 
has not had the strength to retain the 
true content of Christ’s conception of 
brotherhood, albeit choice spirits in all 
ages did. 

This word uttered by Ananias to Saul 
128 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 

was not only the proclamation of brother¬ 
hood but was the prediction of brother¬ 
hood. Saul was not yet a brother to 
Ananias in the sense of having the same 
ideals or the same business of preaching 
the gospel. A Christian man dares to 
leap by faith to the conclusion that the 
hostile, struggling multitudes now so es¬ 
tranged from our Master, shall in due 
season come to do the will of God, and 
so predicts of them what Ananias pre¬ 
dicted of Saul. It was a wonderful pre¬ 
diction, this prediction about Saul’s 
brotherliness. Paul has a history, and 
everything in it affirms the prediction. 
Through brush and thicket his foot¬ 
steps wound; he scaled the mountain 
heights and walked the city streets, and 
where he crossed the ocean his blood 
mingled with the blue; and the ragged 
rocks on the summit’s crown clearly bore 
the imprint of his bruised and bleeding 
feet. He has a history, this man Paul; 
for they chained him oft in dungeons vile 
and grooved his flesh with cruel thongs; 
he knew much of shipwreck and more of 
jail; he was stoned in a certain city and 
129 


CHRIST AND 


cast out for dead, but “after a while arose 
and walked back into the city that stoned 
him and cast him out for dead.” He has 
a history, this man Paul; for everywhere 
and all the time his history was a message 
and his message was a word, and the 
word was Christ, and he inscribed this 
name in Athens and in Corinth and in 
Galatia, and near and far inscribed he it; 
in his own blood was it written, and 
stained with tears were the pages he wrote, 
but the tears strained down into music, 
and we write our hymns by the signs of 
his woe. This small man had a great 
reach, for it was the reach of a heart 
rather than the reach of a hand. And as, 
by those wonderful words of his, he reaches 
across the centuries into our hearts, we 
too join in the tribute the ages have paid 
him, by saying “Saul, Brother,” and thus 
agree to the accuracy of the prediction 
Ananias made. 

It is easy enough for us to predict great 
things of the scholarly classes, but are we 
ready to predict them of the motley 
throngs who hate the church and despise 
the preachers? Are we big enough to say 
130 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


“Brother” to them, and mean what 
Ananias and his Lord meant? Have we 
once again to learn the lesson our Lord 
taught the disciples when the crowd came 
in response to the invitation of the woman 
who said, “Come see a man who told me 
all things that ever I did”? The disciples 
were disgusted with these folks who came 
from sheer curiosity. They were not a 
pure race, they were half Jew, half Canaan- 
ite; their religion was as impure as their 
blood; they were very low in the social 
and moral scale. In the thought of the 
disciples they were mere degenerates. 
But not so in the thought of Jesus. He 
knew what was in man. And he said to 
the dull-eyed disciples, “Lift up your eyes, 
see this crowd; they are fields that are 
white unto harvest.” 

Can we look at the scars which men 
have gotten in their futile quest for what 
they thought best, and love them all 
the more because their hands have bled? 
Can we love them in spite of the ugly 
because they are heirs of Christ? Can 
we impart this vision to our church so 
that it shall place men with this new 
131 


CHRIST AND 


vision for the masses in the churches of 
the cities where the masses hate the 
church? Can we impart this vision to 
the people of our city churches so they 
shall not move to a more exclusive church 
when the preacher invites the foreigners 
to come? Can we keep Christ’s love for 
men so intense among Christians that they 
shall not rest content until every commun¬ 
ity shall be adequately churched to minis¬ 
ter to their needs and to interpret in their 
thought-forms the matchless news which 
Christ brought with his life and death? 
Can we retain the passion to proclaim 
Christ’s message of brotherhood? Have 
we the courage to choose our careers 
or to adjust them, not on the basis of 
financial gain, but in view of how well 
they permit us, with our gifts and training, 
to express brotherhood? Have we the 
faith to predict the growth of spiritual 
concepts in apparently dwarfed lives? Is 
there thrust upon our souls, the souls of 
the laity as well as of the ministry, the 
conviction, “Woe is unto me, if I preach 
not the gospel,” even where crowds are 
sordid and factory walls shut out the 
132 


THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTH 


light of day? Dare we be true when dire 
consequences are threatened us for de¬ 
nouncing the greed that puts profit above 
life? Are we Christian enough to make 
it our business to make business Christian? 

“So nigh is grandeur to the dust. 

So near is God to man; 

When Duty whispers low: ‘Thou must!* 

The youth replies: ‘I can!* ” 


133 





















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